Hiring is Broken

Hiring is Broken. Let’s Talk About It.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at LinkedIn. Job openings with over 5,000 applicants.

Five thousand.

And what’s worse? The job gets reposted. Why? What’s the point of this madness? That’s just LinkedIn. What about their own website? Or Indeed? How many resumes are they hoarding across platforms?

What are they trying to prove? That their hiring process is a chaotic, broken mess? That they’re so lost they think the solution is to pile on another thousand resumes?

Here’s the truth: they don’t know what they’re doing.

The next time you see a job with more than 1,000 applications, send it my way. I’ll call the company and offer to help, because clearly, they need it.

When I started in recruiting, my Microraptor, Baby Cakes, kept me company under the desk. These days, it’s Wyatt, my poodle mix. Things have changed. Recruiting and hiring? They’ve changed even more.

Back then, finding candidates was hard. The internet? Not a thing. I had to dig. Buy directories (yes, actual books), gather business cards from restaurants and bars, sweet-talk my way into company directories, even scour library patents to track people down.

It was a grind—a mix of creativity, charm, and sheer persistence. A good candidate could take days, even weeks, to uncover.

Now? It’s easy. Ridiculously easy. I can buy data—names, emails, phone numbers. I don’t know the name of the pet under your desk yet, but give it time.

With all this information at our fingertips, why are companies still advertising jobs? When I was recruiting, I didn’t advertise. Why would I? It was faster and more effective to go directly after the right people.

Which brings me to the real question: what are recruiters even doing now, when finding people is so simple?

The answer? Selling.

Selling the role, selling the company, explaining the opportunity, and closing the deal. A good recruiter knows the market beyond the bubble their client is living in. They control the process, make it efficient, and get results.

What’s happening today?

Employers are under this bizarre impression that they need thousands of resumes. Spoiler alert: they don’t. They need more than keywords. They need to understand the why. Why this person? How does their experience make the company better?

Now imagine: 5,000 resumes, all keyword-optimized, all meticulously tailored to the job description. How long would it take to screen those?

Let’s say 10 minutes per resume—not nearly enough time, but let’s be generous.

That’s 50,000 minutes.

Which is 833.33 hours.

Or 104.17 workdays, assuming 8-hour days.

And that’s just screening. No interviews, no offers, no hires.

Does that sound like a system that works? Because I can tell you, if I’d taken this approach when I started, I wouldn’t have lasted a week.

Hiring is broken.

My company is working to fix it. Take a look at what you’re doing. Is this the path you want to stay on? If so, there’s nothing to discuss. But if you’re open to doing things differently, we should talk.