"Strong candidates are being wrongly binned by today's recruitment processes"

26 April 2026

2 minute read

I'm a financial services recruiter. I've done this job for decades and am writing here about what's wrong in the current market. I had a conversation this week with a Hiring Manager that sums up a lot of what’s broken in today’s hiring process.

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He’s required to use the internal Talent Acquisition team for a fixed period before a role can go to a specialist recruiter. Accordingly, they spent two and a half weeks sourcing mainly via LinkedIn and the company's careers page. After chasing for an update, he received 72 CVs in one go, with a note asking him to review them. He manages a team of 45. Reviewing 72 CVs isn’t his job. He looked at roughly 10 and decided the department had no real idea what he was looking for. He’d been told by people in ivory towers that this approach would be professional, save time and reduce cost.

The next day, he got a call from a recruiter. Seemingly, a candidate he knew from a few years ago had applied directly two weeks earlier and heard nothing. The recruiter put them in touch. The Hiring Manager met her and relevant members of the team also met her. Verdict - a great fit and available immediately.

So here’s the question - How many strong candidates are being lost in the process before a hiring manager even knows they exist? And of those 72 CVs, how many received a response?

The recruiter who made the connection? No reward, because the candidate had already applied direct said HR!

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AUTHORMr. Recruiter

Insider Comment

Hu
HumpDog
27 April 2026
I spent 10 years running recruiting teams within an investment bank and if any of my recruiters had asked a manager to review 72 CVs I would have sacked them on the spot. Why would the external recruiter put him in touch with someone who had already applied? And if they knew one another, why did they need him to put them in touch? None of this makes sense. Absolute rubbish.
1 reply
Ja
Jane Smith
27 April 2026
So the recruiter basically removed even the minute chance those 75 people had by circumventing the process and bringing in a candidate that hadn't even taken the time to apply to the propper job post. That is what's wrong with recruitment: hiring people "you know". When governments do this, it's called corruption.
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Lo
London Q
26 April 2026
Depends on the organization. I had a very good experience with HR helpers in mine. But I was always wondering what process would ensure they do their job. The performance of HR talent acquisition departments should be measured by metrics that matter. 1) Inject probing CVs of varying quality and see which ones pass the HR barriers. The output can actually be quantified. If they lower the signal-to-noise ratio, fire them - they are useless. 2) Keep a record of their rejects and see how they progress in their careers. Everybody who is anybody is on LinkedIn these days. Can be automated. Build an agent and do this systematically.
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