This post was written by our Co-Founder JuIiet Eccleston
As regular readers of my blog will know, the AnyGood? team hosted a debate last week to discuss why there’s such a lack of trust in the recruitment industry and, crucially, what needs to be done to change this. We brought a real range of experts together, ranging from recruiters, in-house HR professionals, diversity specialists and, of course, myself.
I knew that this debate would certainly generate a lot of speculation – after all you don’t call out the recruitment industry without expecting some form of backlash – but even I was impressed by the passion that could be felt in the room on this subject.
While thoughts were (to put it lightly) varied, there was one thing we all certainly seemed to agree on – people don’t trust the recruitment process. Its flaws are wide-ranging and impact each of us in different ways as candidates, hirers and agency recruiters. But we all agree that there’s extensive room for improvement.
Pinpointing just what needs to be changed, however, was never going to be easy. Indeed, across the panel of six experts, not one of us agreed on the best approach, with some even arguing for the complete opposite solution! Of course, in an ideal scenario it would have been great to leave the debate with one concrete solution that everyone can agree on, but with a problem as big and long-lasting as the modernisation of recruitment, that’s just not realistic.
For me personally, simply facilitating this conversation is the first step in what I envisage will be a very long journey to clean up the recruitment industry for the benefit of the masses. But myself and the AnyGood? team don’t intend to stop here. In fact, we will be taking the key points from this debate to run further discussions with industry leaders, candidates and hirers in order to disrupt the norm and drive change.
We’ll be publishing the full outcomes of this fiery debate along with some video clips, so watch this space for more information!