The truth is anyone can be a recruiter. Because there’s nothing inherently groundbreaking about posting a job, sourcing some profiles and scheduling interviews. That’s why there are so many recruitment agencies out there. Now, they may dress it up with slick marketing, dashboards and even some AI tools (ooo ahh), but these agencies are solving for nothing. Here’s what I mean.
Call it what it is: Recruitment is a commodity service.
There’s nothing inherently groundbreaking about posting a job, sourcing some profiles, and scheduling interviews. Most agencies can do that in their sleep, dressing it up with slick marketing, dashboards, and even AI tools that look impressive but solve nothing.
But here’s the thing: that kind of recruiting isn’t helping your business grow. It’s just helping you check a box. Good recruiting that moves the needle doesn’t start with a job title but with a business problem.
Let me show you how this usually plays out. It is when a company decides they need a role filled. They write a job description, maybe recycle one from a competitor, then pass it to a recruiter. That recruiter plugs the keywords into a business and employment-oriented platform, finds many matches, sends you a few, and waits for your feedback.
On paper, the process may look efficient. But what’s missing? The “why”. Why does this role exist? What’s broken in the business that this person is supposed to fix? What does success actually look like in 30 to 60 days? You’d be surprised how many companies don’t ask that before hiring. Or how many recruiters don’t care to ask.
Keeping this real. You don’t actually want to manage a developer; you want a working product or website that’s live, functional, and delivering results. You don’t want a bookkeeper; you want clean books and taxes filed on time without the last-minute scramble. You don’t want to spend your time motivating the sales team; you want qualified appointments landing on your calendar consistently.
Hiring isn’t about headcount, it’s about progress. It’s about solving the real problems that slow you down, drain your resources, or keep your business stuck. That’s the part most recruiters might completely miss.
Good recruiters don’t just plug in a job description and start searching. They begin by unfolding the why behind the role, and they dig deep. Instead of rushing to source candidates, they ask questions that matter. What’s going to be different in the business once this person is in place? What happens if the role stays vacant? Is this a technical need, an execution need, or something more strategic? Who’s this person replacing, and why didn’t that work out? Until those answers are clear, the hiring process is just guesswork.
Great hires aren’t simply found; they’re matched to a real, defined need. It only happens when both the recruiter and the company are aligned on what success actually looks like.
A resume with all the right keywords, impressive logos, and a glowing cover letter you can get. But if that person doesn’t understand the job behind the job, then the business problem they’re really solving would turn into spending more time managing them than benefiting from them.
That’s the cost of hiring based on surface-level criteria. And it’s a costly mistake, especially for startups and growing teams where every hire carries weight.
There’s a reason some hires don’t stick or fall short of expectations. It’s not always about skill gaps or culture misfits. More often, it comes down to one thing: misaligned expectations.
If your recruiter never asked what success looks like in the first 30 to 90 days, how is the candidate supposed to know? And if you can’t clearly explain what this role unlocks for the business, how can anyone get excited about stepping into it?
If your only goal was to “get someone in the seat,” then you can successfully do that. But don’t be surprised when the results feel underwhelming.
Here’s a simple test. If your recruiter isn’t asking about how your business works, where things are getting stuck, and what you actually want to improve in the next quarter, they’re not really recruiting. They’re just sourcing. And that might be fine if you’re looking for bodies on a team.
But if you want someone who can actually move the needle, the process has to go deeper. It needs to start with the real problem, not just the job title.
Recruitment, by itself, isn’t special. It only becomes valuable when it helps you grow. Next time you hire, ask yourself: What needs to change in the business? Then, make sure your recruiter is helping you solve that and not just checking off a box.
