Progressive or Old School?
Social media entered the mainstream around 2009 and it was from then that the way people communicated with each other started to change.
It started to become more conversational, more colloquial even. More people started writing like they speak, rather than like the AI generated love child of a Paralegal and an HR Generalist.
Since then, I’ve started a niche training business called Copywriting for Recruiters that, among other things, shows recruiters how to make their written communication more effective. And I’m mentioning this only because it was the advent of the social media age that helped create the conditions for this type of training to find an audience and to have some success (so far, touch wood, fingers crossed, etc..)
Something else has also happened.
Recruiters now have more ways to express themselves – to their peers, their target clients and their candidates. It used to be primarily job ads and the phone that did most of the heavy lifting, but now there’s a multitude of different channels and technologies that make it easier for recruiters to reach more people quicker than ever before.
But there have been some downsides.
Many agencies flooded these new channels with the same type of content and that just helped shine a light on how one-dimensional many recruitment agencies are. This preference for quantity over quality is justified (in their eyes) if the mass mailing produces one qualified candidate or one hiring company with a job vacancy. Let’s call these types of recruiters ‘Old School’.
There were others that embraced social media and tuned-in to the more informal nature of all of these new platforms and embracing (albeit it probably unconsciously) the “medium is the message” thinking of Marshall McLuhan. Most were boutique agencies, or inhouse recruiters working for smaller companies or start-ups. Let’s call these types of recruiters ‘Progressive’.
Looking back, I now realise that many of the recruiters who booked a place on our copywriting courses in the first 2-3 years were mostly Progressive recruiters.
Most early adopters of anything tend to be progressive in their view of the world. Many seemingly Old School recruiters have since followed, but I would argue that nearly all of them were recruiters who had a progressive attitude, but were working under old school conditions.
I should also point out that being an Old School recruiter has nothing to do age. The use of the word ‘old’ is purely coincidental.
So, what are some of the characteristics that separate them?
Old School Recruiters
They hear the words “get on the phone” a lot more. They have more needless KPIs.
They tend to refer to placing someone into a new job as “a deal”. To them it’s competitive, almost like it’s a sport.
They’ll often copy and paste a client’s job description onto job boards – and even when they don’t, they still use language that is stiff, formal and full of business jargon. They do this because they still think this is what being professional should look like.
They have a tendency to oversell.
There is a small wing of the Old School camp who think they’re being progressive by sprinkling their job posts with adjectives and superlatives. To them, those adjectives are the difference between marketing and admin.
Old School recruiters see contingency as the de-facto agency operating model for no other reason than that’s how it’s always been done. They believe that’s what clients want.
They prefer working for large, well-known clients because they’re easier to sell to candidates.
They complain when people criticise agency behaviours. They especially hate it when other recruiters criticise agency behaviours.
They’re more likely to buy training that promises to show them how to double their earnings while working fewer hours. They probably value quantity over quality. Those last two sentences are connected because the training often involves broadening and/or scaling-up their mass mailing.
Old School recruiters are less visible on social media – although that might only be what I’m seeing because of the types of recruiters I’m connected to.
Progressive Recruiters
Progressive recruiters are more likely to initiate most of their client or candidate conversations from a keyboard rather than the phone.
They’ll see putting someone into a new job as helping improve their life. Money tends to be a secondary motivator.
They’re more likely to undersell.
Progressive agency recruiters don’t see inhouse recruiters as the enemy. If anything, they see them as being easier to sell to (and work with) if only because they understand the subject matter better than hiring managers and HR generalists.
Some of these Progressive agency recruiters have started to realise that filling more jobs with fewer clients is more productive and makes their work more meaningful. Some have started to move away from contingency, or moved inhouse. Moving away from contingency is probably the most progressive thing a Progressive agency recruiter can do.
They’re more likely to move inhouse, but only because they want to understand how hiring works beyond the numbers-driven, spot-trading perspective that typifies a lot of Old School agency operating models.
They don’t take criticism of their industry personally. Many see criticism from non-recruiters (also sometimes referred to as candidates and clients) as a learning opportunity.
If a Progressive recruiter were to form a recruiters networking group, they’d be mindful of the sector’s perceived reputation and not give it a name that included words like ‘cowboys’ or ‘pirates’.
Progressive recruiters will more likely have a recognisable tone of voice. And by that I mean they don’t sound like the typical recruiter stereotype. As an example, they know the difference between “you” and “yourself”.
A Progressive recruiter would never say LinkedIn’s ‘open to work’ banner makes a candidate look desperate.
Progressive recruiters are the reason I’m still active in the industry. Without them, I’d probably have gotten out 10 years ago. I don’t know if Old School recruiters are still in the majority – but if I had to make a bet, I’d say they are. But not as big a majority as it was 20 years ago.
And of course we can’t ignore the fact that there will be many recruiters in that intersection where both circles overlap. How many? I have no idea. But whatever the number, that is probably where the battle for the industry’s soul is being fought.
One final thought…
If AI gives Old School recruiters the chance to throw more mud at a bigger wall, the industry’s reputation will decline even more. Yes, that is possible.
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