A sincere thought, “from the ground up,” for all actors involved in the recruitment process – recruiters, companies, and candidates:

Because I believe things can be better, let’s address why “the emperor has no clothes.”

For COMPANIES:

• If you need five interviews to “convince yourselves,” the problem is not the candidate.
• If feedback comes two weeks later, don’t be surprised if the person signs elsewhere.
• Recruitment is not just about “finding the perfect candidate.” It’s also about not losing the good one.
• And by the way, recruitment is a consequence of understanding organizational culture. Exactly; once we truly understand the culture we adhere to, we know where and who to look for. Even the recruitment process itself is defined by that culture. When the process lasts longer than the onboarding, you don’t have a pipeline problem, you have a decision-making problem.   For RECRUITERS:
• Let’s stop being just “messengers between worlds.” We have a voice, we have expertise—let’s use them. If we only deliver CVs copied from a job ad, we could just give ChatGPT a script to filter them for us. Our expertise helps save time and money, and when we see a CV, we already know what questions to ask and how many eyebrows it raises.

After just a few moments, you can also sense whether someone has a chance to align with our organizational culture (again, I ended up mentioning culture—I'll stop, I promise, but only in this post).

• Keep the process moving. When everything becomes slow and ambiguous, candidates lose trust—and those candidates are yours.
• Don’t send 10 CVs “so they have options.” Send 2 strong ones and stand behind them.

Recruitment is consulting, not parcel delivery.

For CANDIDATES:

• Respect the time of recruiters, companies—and most importantly, your own time. Confirm the interview, be present, and be prepared. If you’re not interested, say it from the start.

Also, if you want to help improve the market, tell us what you would actually like from any perspective. Candidates educate us and equip us with arguments we can take further—and eventually, they will matter.

• Don’t apply to 15 jobs if you’re not available or truly interested. Guess why: when you are genuinely interested, the people who contacted you before will wonder whether they’re wasting their time.
• Be honest about your expectations. Don’t drag the process hoping that “something better might appear.” Otherwise, you risk going through an entire process only to receive an offer 20% lower than expected or discovering the role is not actually what you wanted.

You have the right to choose. But you also have the responsibility to behave like a professional.