Recruitment has been cheapened by shortcuts, hype language, and a loss of craft.
Let’s call it what it is.
Recruitment has been quietly enshitified.
Not everywhere. Not by everyone. But often enough that candidates feel it, hiring managers are frustrated, and businesses are paying for it in ways they don’t always connect back to recruitment.
This applies to agency recruitment and internal teams alike.
This isn’t a pile-on. It’s a frustration-with-the-system conversation. Because recruitment, done properly, is a skilled occupation. What we’re seeing instead is shortcuts, surface-level processes, and a loss of craft — all wrapped up in shiny job ads and confident LinkedIn captions.
Let’s start with candidate care. Or more accurately, the collapse of it.
Ghosting is now normalised. No feedback. No follow-up. No clarity. Candidates invest time preparing applications, attending interviews, rearranging work and family commitments — and then hear nothing. Not even a “thanks, but no thanks.”
That alone is bad enough.
But it’s even worse when we’re talking about preferred applicants. Especially those being asked to consider relocation.
If you’re asking someone to relocate, communication is part of the role selling process
Relocation isn’t clicking “apply” and seeing what happens. It’s not a casual decision. It’s packing up your entire life for a job.
It’s housing availability. Rental prices. Schooling. Childcare waitlists. Medical services. Commute times. Internet reliability. Climate. Community. Distance from family. Employment opportunities for partners. Whether the town actually feels liveable, or just survivable.
Yet I regularly see preferred candidates left in limbo. Weeks without updates. No sense of timeline. No transparency about where things are at. No acknowledgement that they’re sitting there trying to decide whether to give notice, break a lease, pull kids out of schools, or say no to other opportunities while they wait.
If you’re courting someone to move towns — especially to a regional or remote location — communication is not optional. It’s part of the role selling process.
Candidate care here means being proactive. Sharing information about the town. Being honest about housing constraints. Talking openly about lifestyle realities, not just the job description. Setting expectations around decision timeframes and sticking to them.
Silence isn’t neutral. Silence creates anxiety. And anxiety kills good candidates.
Before they even start, they’re questioning whether this organisation understands the weight of what it’s asking.
Then there’s the job ads.
If I had a dollar for every time I read “we’re seeking a dynamic individual to join our fast-paced team,” I’d retire early.
Dynamic. Primary objective. Hit the ground running. Must thrive under pressure. We’re like a family.
None of these phrases explain the work. They don’t tell candidates how success is measured, what the workload actually looks like, how decisions are made, or what leadership expects day to day.
They’re filler. Corporate speak. Empty phrasing that sounds impressive and means nothing.
Worse, they attract the wrong people. Hype language attracts hype applicants. Then everyone’s confused when the match doesn’t last.
Which brings me to interviews.
Behavioural interviewing is not asking “how would you handle…” and hoping for a polished answer. It’s not a casual chat disguised as assessment. And it’s definitely not “I just feel like they’d be a good fit.”
Good behavioural interview questions are built from a deep understanding of the role, the environment it operates in, and the behaviours that actually drive performance. You need to know what great looks like. You need to listen for evidence, not confidence.
Instead, I see interviews where everyone’s talking and no one’s assessing. Or candidates rewarded for charisma rather than capability.
And then culture gets wheeled out as the reason. Culture fit. That familiar catch-all when decisions can’t be explained properly.
If you can’t articulate what your culture expects in terms of behaviour, accountability, communication, and standards, you’re not assessing culture. You’re selecting familiarity.
Internal recruitment teams aren’t immune either.
When recruitment is treated as an admin function rather than a strategic capability, it shows. Vague briefs. Rushed processes. Hiring managers who “know what they want” but can’t describe it. Recruiters expected to deliver outcomes without the time, authority, or context to do the work properly.
Agency recruitment has its own flavour of this. KPI pressure. Speed over substance. Relationships replaced by transactions. Candidates treated as inventory rather than people with careers, families, and long memories.
Recruitment isn’t admin. It’s a skilled occupation.
Here’s what businesses often miss.
Recruitment is frequently someone’s first experience of your organisation. It shapes your reputation whether you like it or not. Candidates talk. Communities remember. And in regional markets especially, word travels fast.
Good recruitment is structured, thoughtful, and human. It respects that choosing a job — especially one that involves relocation — is a major life decision.
When recruitment is done well, people start on the front foot. When it’s done badly, no amount of onboarding, culture work, or leadership development can fully undo the damage.
So yes, let’s say it plainly.
Recruitment has been cheapened by shortcuts, hype language, and a loss of care.
But it doesn’t have to stay that way.
Because when recruitment is treated as the skilled occupation it is, candidates feel respected, leaders make better decisions, teams perform better, and businesses stop paying the hidden cost of getting it wrong.
That’s the real work.