Are You Guilty of Allowing Technology ?? to Make You Lazy?

Are You Guilty of Allowing Technology ?? to Make You Lazy?

Article by Sophie Bubb , dSb Recruitment Consultancy Ltd.

As one of those slightly longer in the tooth recruiters (not quite old enough to have faxed CVs but still, who averaged 3-4 f2f meetings a day, and only organised processes by picking up the phone), I can certainly see the advantages of the digital age for all parties involved…..but they can come at a cost.

The longer I do this job (coming up to 20 years), the more I’ve realised that we all need to proceed with a bit of caution. There’s certainly some hypocrisy in what I’m writing – at dSb we’re about to upgrade our database system to allow us to be even more effective and efficient at arm’s length, but if there’s not a balance, all the 3C’s* will suffer.

*Consultant, Candidate, Client

Of course, we still ‘meet’ people face to face but 90%** of the time it’s virtual. We all know that it’s driven by advances in technology and the effect Covid has had on the way we can (and often want) to work ….but are we willing to accept that it’s also partly down to laziness? ??

Yes, I’m here to call us all out on that one.

**very approximate

Candidates and clients are now not willing to schlep in to a city centre for a meeting if they’re not already due in, and actually would it be a good use of their time to do so? They’re probably mostly home-based themselves, so you really have to be something special to convince them to do that. Maybe I should be disappointed that I’m not more often! ??

And isn’t it great? We can all network in our pants if we want to (personally I put something on my bottom half, but each to their own).

BUT it’s not the same. If you’ve been in business long enough to see both methods, the commercial value and personal buy-in you give and receive from a face-to-face meeting is far greater for all involved. Even though it might be difficult beforehand to see how it outweighs the effort, push yourself to do this more and you’ll 100% see both positive tangible and intangible outcomes, no doubt….of course, I’d still advise being selective with your effort.

Now, how about organising interviews over WhatsApp, and getting/giving feedback over email…..who does these? I do sometimes, I hold my hands up ??. And so do most of the 3Cs. It’s become the standard form and oh, isn’t it so quick and easy? I can often get an answer from someone far faster than I ever could before, and that in itself is hugely valuable…but you guessed it, there’s another BUT coming. The quality, quantity and detail of the information you receive and give over the phone is incomparable to anything just transactionally written.

As a candidate or client, those extra snippets of information you’ll get from your Recruiter (and they from you) by picking up their call, could prove invaluable to having a successful recruitment process. Not always, depends on the quality of your recruiter, but often. I could give you many examples of processes saved, but will just ask you to trust me on this. Of course we Recruiters have to be making those calls in the first place, not just taking the easy way out by sending an email or message.

I think you’ve got the gist of my thoughts ??. Getting a new super duper database system has prompted the musings. I don’t doubt it will help us facilitate our processes better and faster (huge plus for everyone involved), but we must ALL make sure that we don’t allow technology to make us robotic and, dare I say it again, lazy.