r/recruiting

After 15+ years in HR, the last several as an HR Director, I've seen that most people I know in HR didn't plan to be here. They stumbled in through a recruitment role, an admin job that evolved, or some XYZ degree that needed somewhere to land.

What I've also realized is that there's usually a moment, sometimes early, sometimes years in, where you consciously decide to stay, but because something about the work got you.

For me it was realising that HR done well is one of the few functions that can actually change how a person experiences their working or so called "Corporate Life". That is seriously something. No?

So, what was yours?

Hey Guys,

I am currently 4years in Singapore's recruitment agency, and I am handling corporate function desk, and I was given an offer to move to a AI learning company for some project hirings with a decent pay raise (30%), so i accepted the offer.

so after I submitted my resignation, my boss counter offer me (20%) and let me to dual hat Corporate role and IT role (wasn't allowed to do so previously due to internal policy) for me to build my portfolio and career, instead of going in-house and potentially get retrench given the current market situation.

Both are equally attractive to me but I need some advise from you guys, please send me some help..

I work a 360 desk at an IT agency. We have two junior guys on PIPs after about a year of limited to no success. Both of them try, but it just isn’t working out.

I was informed last Friday that we would be getting a new guy. I’m usually involved in new hires and typically have some input on who joins the team. This new guy was originally supposed to be on another team, but that manager is about to go on vacation, so they switched him over after he had already accepted the offer.

It’s this guy’s second day, and on both his first and second days he has taken 4–5 personal calls. I found out they were real estate sales calls and him prospecting homes to sell.

I get that people sometimes need two jobs these days, and some coworkers do have second jobs. I even had a second job refereeing men’s league basketball games. But that was outside working hours.

I feel a little jaded because now I’m going to help train this kid and teach him the job, and I feel like he’ll probably fail because I know this market is tough. You really have to be fully committed to the business and constantly calling and working new opportunities.

I also think it looks bad to the other junior folks that this guy is making real estate calls while in the office. Am I wrong for thinking that?

I run a boutique search firm in the technical / engineering space. As we've been growing I'm wanting to understand how much revenue per employee we should be billing to be average, above average or elite?

Currently we are averaging $380k per person.

I'm looking to increase this by raising prices for new searches as we're often at or near capacity at any given time.

Is $380k good? How high are elite level teams?

So I started working at a local staffing agency about 3 months ago, and what was originally just “a job from indeed” that called me back after applying to like 300 places, it quickly turned into “I think I may want to make this my career” I’m really enjoying it, I’ve even been looking at getting some different HR certificates and just seeing how to further my career, but anyway the reason you guys clicked I was wondering

What’s the difference as far as work life, duties, and just day to day differences between an agency like I work at that staffs for multiple companies vs recruiting at a single company, basically what we do all day is calling web applicants, getting people interviewed, onboarded and ready with us whether we have jobs or not because we never know what a client will need…. I imagine a single company will have more of an idea of how many people they will need with what skills at any given time, I feel like there is probably a lot more actual HR stuff going on as a recruiter with a company because you keep them longer than 3 months like us lol but I don’t know

I’m trying to learn more about different types of recruiting to see where I want to go after this

What is going on that recruiters are forced to sign crazy NDAs and non competes that seemingly cover everything and the kitchen sink and still making less than 50k??

Is this the new normal?

Some of them are straight forward but some are so complex I don't even want to sign them without a lawyer checking them out.

Please let me know if this is normal because if it is, Im going to have to contact my state representatives because this has gotten insane.

Prior to me joining, my employer has worked with numerous agencies over the years and some roles took well over 1 year to be filled while working with multiple agencies.

Right now, we are working with boutique and agencies with 1-8 employees and one larger agency with 150+. The difference is huge. With the smaller agencies is almost feel like they are overburdened and after a week or 2 they kind of give up. I understand because they are doing business outreach and candidate sourcing.

ON the other hand, the larger agency is delivering way above expectations. They have a lot of sourcing tools, they have multiple sourcers assigned to roles along with the recruiter. They are always at it. They do charge a lot and I understand why.

Anyone here worked for an international/larger agency and how was the experience?

I do mostly shop roles at the moment but have done some engineering roles when they pop up. Honestly, I find most of my candidates through Indeed. Realistically about 98% of them. Linkedin can be good at times but generally I dont get many responses back since most of them are passive candidates.

Just curious if you guys have any recommendations where to find candidates besides Indeed. I find Ziprecruiter and Careerbuilder terrible. Wouldn't recommend those to anyone.

One thing I’ve been thinking about lately is whether AI is actually increasing the value of trust in recruiting.

Not because the technology is bad, but because it lowers the barrier to producing polished outreach at scale. When so much outreach starts sounding polished, I think people start relying more on trust signals to decide who they’ll actually respond to.

Referrals, warm intros, mutual connections, reputation, etc.

Feels like the human side of recruiting may end up mattering more, not less.

Recruiter friends, need a real talk here.

We've all been there. You screen a resume, it looks solid, you move the candidate forward. They get to the technical interview and... it's clear the resume was generous.

Hiring manager is frustrated. Candidate is embarrassed. You're stuck in the middle having done exactly what was asked of you: screen for resume fit.

But here's the thing, resume screening for skill accuracy is nearly impossible without some kind of verification. You can't know if someone "led" a project or just attended the meetings. You can't know if "proficient in Python" means 5 years or 5 Stack Overflow answers.

How are you handling this in your process? Have you found anything that gives better signal earlier, before you've used the hiring manager's time on a call that shouldn't have happened?

Not looking for "do a better job screening" takes. Genuinely asking about structural fixes people have found.

Hi! TA Ops manager for a ~1000 person company here - it has been pretty hard to get the team to adopt any new workflows but I am trying to automate as much as I can because data gets lost all the time. Currently we use Microsoft Forms to conduct reference checks - each recruiter duplicates the form, sends their references out, and then has to keep track via email. We're in Ashby - is there a way to automate this at all? We can't purchase any integrations unfortunately

I run a boutique agency and looking for a new ATS/CRM. Small team of less than 10 using the tool and need both ATS/CRM capabilities. We also use LinkedIn Recruiter for sourcing. Narrowed the list to Loxo vs. RecruiterFlow. From what I can tell, leaning into Loxo may reduce our dependency on LIR - but I have no idea of the quality of the sourcing through their tool. RF on the other hand, is fully embedded with LIR, so kinda doubling down there. I'm not trying to solve for sourcing, really need efficient work flows and clean data capture.

Anyone using one of these, tested them both? I'd love to hear the good, the bad and the ugly.

I've recently moved from sales to tech recruiting. Over the past few years, I've gotten pretty good at recognizing what are the key things to look for among sales candidates (SDRs, BDRs and AEs). Sales is somewhat similar to recruiting at the end of the day.

Tech is a whole different space. How are you all discerning positive signals and red flags?

For now, I'm mostly matching up titles, languages and frameworks we use as well as company size/reputation, but I'm curious if others have a better process or system?

I'm also running into a lot of fake candidates. Like fake experience, LinkedIn and things like that. Once you hop on a call, things start to fall apart. Like a person with a Hispanic name turns out to be a Chinese dude.

I keep thinking about how every recruiting tool right now promises basically the same thing. Better sourcing, better personalization, better outreach, better matching. And honestly, some of it actually is pretty impressive.

But I’m starting to wonder if AI is creating this weird arms race where everyone now has access to the exact same weapons. Same enrichment tools, same prompts, same sequencing strategies, same “personalized” outreach.

At some point, if everyone is using the same systems to sound different, does anybody actually sound different anymore?

Ironically, I feel like trust, reputation, referrals, and real relationships are standing out more now, not less. The firms and recruiters winning right now don’t necessarily feel the most automated. They feel the most believable.

Honestly feels like that matters more now than ever.

For most of my career as a Recruiting Manager, I've had no issues finding early-career recruiters (2-4 years of experience) and pulling them out of staffing and into corporate. I've got a new role on my team and those candidates are just...gone? Everyone applying has 15+ years of experience and LinkedIn is uncharacteristically dry. Did every recruiter just up and quit and go to Amazon as a sales rep or am I just crazy?

EDIT: oops, I meant "recruiters who are early in their career" not "recruiters who specialize in early career candidates". I appreciate all the DMs but this is full suite corporate recruiting, not university or recent grad.

Genuine question because I can’t tell anymore

Feels like sourcing used to be “find good people and start conversations.”

Now it’s sourcing + outreach + personalization + follow-ups + ATS updates + CRM hygiene + activity tracking + metrics + reporting + LinkedIn noise + AI tools everywhere.

And candidates seem harder to engage at the same time.

I’m curious whether people here think sourcing itself has actually gotten harder, or if recruiters are just carrying more workflow/admin load around the sourcing process now

Because sometimes it feels like the sourcing isn’t the exhausting part anymore

Because apparently requiring: senior-level experience, junior-level pay, immediate availability, flawless communication, culture fit, startup energy, corporate polish and “passion” for one position is somehow considered reasonable now.

Then leadership says: “We just can’t find employees.”

Right.

IMO companies spent years optimizing hiring around filtering people out, and now they’re confused why good candidates disappear halfway through the process.

The market changed. Candidate tolerance changed. People are less willing to jump through hoops for companies that show zero signs of respect or stability.

And honestly, good for them.

The most ironic part is watching organizations reject perfectly capable applicants while simultaneously complaining about labor shortages in the same meeting.

Modern hiring feels like self-sabotage with spreadsheets

So I have been working with one of the top 4 advertising giants for the last 3 months on a one year fixed term contract, it will get renewed for sure. But just because of the environment and work culture I started looking out and got a call from Adobe for a talent sourcer and market intelligence role, it's good but on 6 months contract and is a backfill of someone who is on maternity leave. They are not saying anything like extended contract or anything so after 6 months it depends upon business needs but they can't guarantee it. Considering I will just be leaving within 3 months from here, i wanna look for a role where I can stay long term, i am ok with contract but it should be at least a year or chance of getting extended be there otherwise it will not make sense for me to again start job hunting after 6 months. What should I do??

I feel like PTO hasn't been solved in this industry yet. I work for a split desk agency (one sales, one recruiter.) Also some full deskers.

Sales needs no coverage unless out for more than two weeks... Recruiter needs coverage if out for more than 3 biz days, and has to give up at least 5% of their revenue credit.

How is your company managing PTO?

I'm just starting out in sourcing and recruiting, and wondering if this is something recruiters actually buy.

Say you have a hard technical role, and someone sends you 20–30 candidates that are:

• matched to the specific role
• backed by public evidence like GitHub, projects, posts, company background, etc.
• ranked with short notes on why each person fits

No outreach included. Just the sourced/researched list.

Would this be useful enough to pay for?

If yes, what would make the list valuable and what would you expect to pay?

If no, why not?