Technology has disconnected the recruiter from clients and candidates, Greg Savage, global speaker and consultant on staffing issues and social media told a London audience.

Speaking last Friday [22 November] at an Elite Recruitment Network event attended by Recruiter, Savage emphasised that “what worked before will no longer work in the future”, and gave a stark warning that recruitment agencies that rely only on candidates making proactive applications won’t be around in the future.

“If that’s your only tactic, your business will fail,” he said. Even though social media is not new, many recruiters are not making any changes at all to how they recruit. “The one thing you can’t do – is nothing,” he warned.

Even though technology is making it easier to identify candidates, candidate recruiting and hiring will get harder, he told the audience. Clients are also investing in talent sourcing, and are either finding the talent themselves or using recruitment process outsourcing models. 

Savage argued that recruiters are allowing themselves to become increasingly irrelevant. “What can recruiters provide clients that they can’t do themselves?” he asked.

Despite high unemployment, there is a huge number of unfilled jobs, he said. “It’s a good thing [for recruiters] to have skill shortages,” he claimed. Talent is a strategic priority, but “you’ve got to have strategies to access talent”, he said. “If you have the talent, clients will come.”

Becoming a social recruitment company and building a talent community is the way forward, he said. “Don’t dabble in it, build your company on it,” he told the audience. “I define the future of recruitment as where technology meets skilled human interaction.”

• See recruiter.co.uk during the week to find out more about Greg Savage’s views on how the future recruiter should operate, the way technology and the human touch can go hand-in-hand, and how recruiters should focus more on talent communities and less on talent pools.

Vanessa Townsend