How to Fail at Recruitment and Ensure Your Organisation Gets the Worst Possible Talent.
- chris251714
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
Recruitment is hard.
Getting it right requires clarity, leadership, time, and intent. So naturally, if your goal is to attract the weakest possible candidates, frustrate the good ones, and burn your employer brand to the ground, there are some proven best practices you should absolutely follow.
Below is a helpful guide on how to fail spectacularly at hiring, a checklist observed far too often in the wild.
1. Pay Low Recruitment Fees
Nothing signals “we value talent” quite like paying bottom-of-the-market fees.
This ensures recruiters:
Prioritise other clients who pay properly
Allocate junior consultants or automated sourcing
Give your role just enough attention to tick a box
Recruitment is a sales role. Shocking, I know. Pay peanuts → get monkey-level commitment.
2. Cut Off Your Recruiters and Use Third-Party Vendors Instead
Why work with people who understand your business when you can add layers of confusion?
By routing everything through third-party suppliers:
No one knows what’s really going on
Candidates receive vague, inaccurate briefs
Consultants can’t represent your firm properly
The result? Maximum noise, minimum insight, zero accountability.
3. Avoid Briefings at All Costs – Palm It Off to TA
Hiring managers briefing recruiters is wildly overrated.
Instead:
Delegate everything to your TA team
Ensure multiple rounds of “Chinese whispers”
Share no insight into team dynamics, succession plans, or business priorities
TA teams are excellent, but they cannot know every role, function, stakeholder, and political nuance in a complex organisation.
If you’re a manager (at any seniority level) and you’re not involved in hiring, expect it to fail.
4. Recruit for Politics, Not Talent
Always prioritise:
Internal optics
Who won’t upset anyone
Who fits existing power structures
This guarantees:
Team disruption
Poor performance
Quiet quitting or loud resignations
Nothing kills momentum like hiring someone because they were “safe.”
5. Demand Unicorns… on a Hamster Budget
Ask for:
World-class skills
Blue-chip pedigree
20 years’ experience
Multiple languages
Leadership gravitas
Then offer:
A below-market salary
Limited scope
Zero upside
When no one applies, act surprised.
6. Oversell the Role Shamelessly
Describe the role as:
“Fast-paced”
“Transformational”
“Highly strategic”
Even if it’s actually:
BAU
Under-resourced
Decision-light
This ensures your new hire leaves within probation, and you get to start the process all over again. Fantastic for KPIs, terrible for teams.
7. Rely Entirely on AI to Hire
AI is brilliant, when used properly.
So naturally, use it:
As a blunt filtering tool
To auto-reject unconventional but high-potential candidates
Without understanding context, career arcs, or transferable skills
AI can’t join the dots. It doesn’t understand nuance, trade-offs, or leadership judgement. But by all means, let it decide your future hires.
8. Stretch the Process to Six Months
A slow process tells candidates:
You’re disorganised
You can’t make decisions
You don’t value their time
Top candidates will:
Lose interest
Accept other offers
Disappear politely (or not so politely)
And then, you guessed it, you start again…
9. Add Lots of Late-Stage Testing
Psychometrics. Case studies. Presentations. Preferably after eight interviews.
Then:
Over-index on the test results
Ignore lived experience and judgement
Outsource the decision to a spreadsheet
Isn’t hiring meant to be your job as a leader?
10. Offshore Recruitment to Cut Costs
To really elevate the experience:
Offshore your recruitment team
Remove all local market understanding
Spam candidates with irrelevant roles
Bonus points if candidates join your “talent pool” and immediately regret it.
11. Ignore Context, Training, and Experience
Assume:
Skills are static
Learning curves don’t exist
Onboarding is optional
Remember: Be clueless, it's ok.
12. Change the Role Mid-Process Without Telling Anyone
A classic.
Shift priorities
Add responsibilities
Remove budget
Keep recruiters and candidates in the dark
Confusion builds character. Or resentment. Mostly resentment.
13. Treat Candidates as Commodities
No feedback. No updates. No respect.
This ensures:
Brand damage
Glassdoor reviews
Long memories
Senior talent talks. A lot.
14. Finally, Blame the Recruiter
When it inevitably goes wrong:
Blame external partners
Blame TA
Blame “the market”
Anything except the process.
The Real Point, (Because Yes, This Is Satire)
Great recruitment requires:
Leadership involvement
Clear priorities
Realistic expectations
Mutual accountability
Context matters. Experience matters. Training matters.
And above all people matter.
If you want to attract top talent, the opposite of everything above applies.
If you want help fixing it, well, that’s where we come in.
C Graham Consulting
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