[Podcast] FDE Express | Why 2026 Isn’t the Year of AI — It’s the Year of Operations

Is AI creating advantage—or exposing inefficiency at scale? Kortney Harmon breaks down why 2026 won’t be defined by better tools, but by better operations.

As growth slows and teams shrink, firms can’t outwork broken systems. Fragmented data, bloated tech stacks, and unclear workflows are quietly draining productivity—and AI is only accelerating the problem. The firms pulling ahead are doing less, better: integrating systems, tightening workflows, and turning scattered data into operational clarity.

Discover why operational discipline—not more technology—is what will separate scalable firms from stagnant ones in 2026.

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Kortney Harmon [00:00:00]:
AI is truly accelerating everything, including bad processes. AI doesn’t fix bad operations, it amplifies them. If your workflows are messy, AI just makes messier things happen faster.

Kortney Harmon [00:00:17]:
Hi, I’m Kortney Harmon, Director of Industry Relations at crelate.

Kortney Harmon [00:00:21]:
Welcome to FDE Express, a short, sweet

Kortney Harmon [00:00:23]:
format of the Full Desk Experience Crelate original podcast. We’ll be diving into specific topics to show you how you grow your firm within 10 minutes or less. Each episode will cover quick hit topics to give you inspiration and food for thought for your talent businesses.

Kortney Harmon [00:00:47]:
Welcome back to the Full Desk Experience podcast. And today’s episode is an express, which means it’s just me. A quick rant, and hopefully something gets you thinking a little differently about how you’re running your recruiting business today. So as for today’s topic, I’ve actually been talking a lot about this on stages lately, and 2026 is, in my mind, the year of operations. Not the year of sourcing, not the year of sales, not even the year of AI. It’s the year of operations. Because here’s the reality. A lot of firms are quietly dealing with this right now.

Kortney Harmon [00:01:26]:
The recruiting industry isn’t growing in breakneck paces like it once did. Some projections are showing the staffing markets are only growing around 2% this year. Now, that’s not a collapse, but it’s definitely not explosive growth. We’re not quite recovered from that Covid or the C word. And what that means is something really important. You can’t grow your way out of inefficiency anymore. You have to operate your way into performance. So there’s a big shift happening right now.

Kortney Harmon [00:01:59]:
Over the last 20 years, recruiting firms really have largely run around activity metrics. And we’re to the point that the calls, the submittals, the interviews, the placements, those things are familiar to you? And don’t get me wrong, those things still matter. But the firms that are winning right now aren’t just tracking activities. They’re tracking systems. They’re tracking workflows. They’re focused on operational velocity. Because something interesting has happened across our industry, many firms actually have reduced seats over the last two years. Fewer recruiters, smaller teams, more cautious hiring.

Kortney Harmon [00:02:40]:
But the work didn’t disappear. Clients still expect speed. Candidates still expect the experience. And recruiters, let’s face it, they still need to deliver results. So the big question now becomes, how do you do more with fewer people? The answer isn’t hustle. The answer is operations. Operations really becomes the heart of the firm. And I’m going to refer to that it’s the heart of the firm.

Kortney Harmon [00:03:10]:
For a long time, Operations really sat in the background of the recruiting firms. Operations manage Systems pulled reports configured in ats. It was really seen as support. But that model doesn’t work anymore. Because modern recruiting firms don’t run people alone. They don’t run on people alone. Hopefully they don’t run them either. They run on systems, workflows, automations, data technology.

Kortney Harmon [00:03:38]:
And someone has to make all of those things work together. That someone is Operations. Operations is becoming the heart of the recruiting firm because every system in your business holds a piece of truth. Your candidate knows your or your ATS knows your candidates. Your CRM knows your clients. Hopefully those are together. Your sourcing platform knows your prospects. You could have it built in.

Kortney Harmon [00:04:04]:
Your email platform knows your conversations. Your back office system knows your revenue. None of those systems see the full picture unless you have the right one. But Operations does. Operations is the function that’s connecting all of those systems so the business actually works. Because without that connection, you don’t have a tech stack. You have tech chaos. And that’s where a lot of firms are right now.

Kortney Harmon [00:04:31]:
They’re looking where they can reduce spend because all these shiny tools came out. And now we’re thinking how we can consolidate them differently. There was that tech explosion, but chaos came with it. Most recruiting firms today are running on 8 to 15 tools in their tech stack. ATSs, CRM, sourcing tools, AI tools, email automation, sales enablement, data enrichment, background checks, assessment platforms, payroll systems, back office software. And every single one promises efficiencies. But here’s the uncomfortable truth. Many firms have actually created operational complexity more than they had five years ago.

Kortney Harmon [00:05:17]:
Because the tools don’t talk. Or worse, they talk, but not well. Data gets duplicated, records get lost. Notes live in six places. Recruiters are jumping between systems just to understand what’s happening. And the result? That technology that was supposed to make your life faster actually slows you down. Which is why, exactly, why operations is becoming the new leadership discipline in recruiting. Because someone has to answer all the questions like where does the data actually live? What system is actually the source of truth? What workflow should recruiters follow? What automations should exist and shouldn’t exist? And without those answers, technology becomes noise.

Kortney Harmon [00:06:03]:
Instead of leverage, AI is truly accelerating everything, including bad processes. So let’s talk about that elephant in the room, AI. Because if you’re in recruiting today, AI is showing up everywhere. It’s showing up in your sourcing tools and showing up in your campaigns and your outreach tools. It’s showing up in your screening tools, it’s showing up matching tools, it’s showing up in your ATS and your CRM. But there’s research out there that suggests over 80% of hiring workflows will involve AI in the next few years. But here’s the kicker. A lot of firms implementing AI are not actually seeing dramatic improvements yet.

Kortney Harmon [00:06:49]:
But why? Because AI doesn’t fix bad operations, it amplifies them. If your workflows are messy, AI just makes messier things happen faster. If your data is fragmented, AI pulls from fragmented data. If recruiters don’t know which system to trust, AI creates more noise. And the firms that are seeing the biggest gains right now aren’t the firms with the most tools. They’re the firms with the best operational foundations. Clean data, clear workflows, defined ownership in systems. Because when those things exist, AI becomes a multiplier, not a distraction.

Kortney Harmon [00:07:35]:
The hidden ROI is really inside operations. And this is where operational leaders need to start thinking differently. Because inside most recruiting firms, there are huge productivity leaks hiding in plain sight. For example, I kind of pulled some of the audiences in which I’m speaking to. In the offices that we know, recruiters actually spend roughly, they agreed, 13 hours per week sourcing candidates for a single role. But if they had a better discover tool in workflows, many firms are reducing that to about two hours. What does that mean? That’s 11 hours saved every week over the course of a year. That equals 71 additional working days per recruiter.

Kortney Harmon [00:08:26]:
Not from hiring more people, from better operations. Now think about that at scale. If the average recruiter salary is $63,000, that productivity shift represents around $12,600 in value per recruiter annually. In a 50 recruiter firm, that’s like $600,000 operationally unlocked of value. And that’s just one workflow. Here’s another point of contention. Other hidden problem is really operational blind spots. Knowledge workers really spend around two and a half hours a day searching for information.

Kortney Harmon [00:09:05]:
Candidates, phone numbers, clients, emails, looking through past conversations, candidate notes, client history. But when firms start implementing better insight systems and unified data, that search time can drop from two and a half hours a day to 15 minutes per day. That’s a reduction 90% time in research time, which, let’s face it, adds up, adds up to around 500 hours per recruiter per year, redirected back into revenue activity. And oftentimes database utilization increases by 300%. Meaning your candidates need you. Oftentimes they’re already sitting inside your system. Operations just hadn’t unlocked it yet. So the hidden problems of data silos.

Kortney Harmon [00:09:51]:
It really leads to the biggest operational challenge I see across recruiting firms. Those data silos. Every system holds a piece of truth. We talked about that. Your ATS knows your candidates, your CRM knows your clients, your sourcing tools knows your prospects, so on and so forth. But leadership really can’t see that full picture, which means decisions are made on partial data. And the questions that matter often go unanswered. Where are the deals coming from? Where is the true recruiter productivity? Which sourcing channels generate the most placements? Where are candidates dropping in our processes? Those are operational questions.

Kortney Harmon [00:10:30]:
And they’re becoming critical to running a modern recruiting firm. So 2026, the firms that are winning, it’s the year of operations. So what does that actually mean? That means a few things. It, number one, means tech consolidation. Stop adding tools. Start integrating systems. If your recruiters have to live in six platforms just to do their job, your operations is broken. Workflow ownership.

Kortney Harmon [00:10:56]:
Recruiters historically have seen freedom in how they work. And culturally, that is great, but it does create some chaos. Winning firms have clear workflows. How candidates move through the process, how deals move through the pipeline, how data gets entered, how communication happens. And that consistency creates speed. Number three is data literacy. Leaders no longer can rely on a gut instinct. They need operational visibility, not vanity metrics, but real business intelligence.

Kortney Harmon [00:11:29]:
Revenue per recruiter, pipeline velocity, conversation rates by clients, source to placement ratios. Those numbers all tell you how your firm is actually functioning and the real opportunity here. This is the good news. Most recruiting firms haven’t figured this out yet. They’re still thinking about growth in terms of more recruiters, more seats, more activities. But the firms that dominate in the next decade will think differently. They’re going to ask, how do we build a recruiting firm that runs like a high performance operating system, where technology can support people, where data guides decisions, where workflows eliminate friction? Because when that happens, recruiters stop wasting time navigating systems and they get back to doing what actually matters, which is building relationships. So if you’re listening to this and thinking about where to focus this year, don’t start with more tools.

Kortney Harmon [00:12:27]:
Don’t start with more recruiters. Start with operations. Ask yourself, where are our systems? Disconnected. Where are our workflows? Unclear. Where is our data fragmented? Because the firms that answer those questions will be the firms that figure out how to do more with less. And in today’s market, that is the real competitive advantage. Guys, thanks so much for listening in to this FDE Express and just trying to get you to think differently. Hopefully you can share this with a recruiting leader who’s trying to figure out the next steps in their industry and what is actually happening.

Kortney Harmon [00:13:09]:
Because this is where our conversations need to happen and how we address with our own firms how 2026 is your operations.

Kortney Harmon [00:13:20]:
That’s all for today’s episode of FDE Express. I’m Kortney Harmon with Crelate. If you have any questions or topics you’d like for us to cover in future episodes, please feel free to submit them to [email protected] or ask us live next session. And don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast wherever you listen and sign up for our monthly events to keep learning and growing your business. Thanks for tuning in to FDE Express, a short and sweet format of the full desk experience. We’ll see you next time.

Kortney Harmon [00:13:52]:
Time.

Kortney Harmon [00:00:00]:
Now for the harsh truth about technology. If your recruiting tech stack isn’t built on a living platform that continuously evolves with AI, it’s not an asset, it’s dragging you into irrelevance. So what exactly is a living platform? It’s the difference between survival and extinction. In recruiting, it evolves without you having to push it. Traditional systems require you to upgrade them. Living platforms upgrade themselves. It’s putting something in the box. And while you put it in the box, it’s getting sunlight, it’s getting water, it’s getting nutrition.

Kortney Harmon [00:00:35]:
To grow and thrive and be bigger every day. It gets smarter every day. Hi, I’m Kortney Harmon, Director of Industry Relations at crelate. Welcome to FDE Express, a short, sweet format of the Full Desk Experience, a Crelate original podcast. We’ll be diving into specific topics to show you how you grow your firm within 10 minutes or less. Each episode will cover quick hit topics to give you inspiration and food for thought for your talent businesses. Welcome back to the Fulldesk Experience where we talk about growth blockers across your people, process and tech. I’m your host, Kortney Harmon, Director of Industry Relations here at Crelate, and today we’re tackling the brutal truth that many in our industry do not want to hear.

Kortney Harmon [00:01:29]:
The traditional way you’ve been doing business in recruiting for decades is dead in a post AI world. That’s right, I said it dead. Let’s be completely transparent. If you’re still counting calls, submissions, interviews the same way you did five years ago, you’re not just falling behind, you’re already irrelevant. In an industry becoming transformed by AI. Those traditional metrics aren’t just failing to drive growth, they’re actually killing your business. So in this recruiting world, we’ve all been accustomed to certain metrics, me included the number of calls, your number of submissions, your number of interviews, and even placements. The uncomfortable truth is recruiting isn’t about filling seats.

Kortney Harmon [00:02:16]:
It’s actually about driving different business results. And your outdated KPIs are actually missing the point entirely. I had a call with a recruiting company last year. Each person on their team was actually making 50 calls daily, sending hundreds of LinkedIn messages weekly, submitting dozens of candidates. Their activity metrics looked incredible on paper, but as we dug deeper, their placement rates has actually dropped 15% and consultation retention was at an all time low. Our teams often get stuck in this hamster wheel of manual data. Essentially, it’s like a chore and almost never get to the point of actually producing meaningful results. Does that sound familiar? This is the death spiral of recruiting metrics and it is evolving drastically in this post AI world.

Kortney Harmon [00:03:08]:
Now let me be brutally honest, if you’re not leveraging AI in your recruiting workflows, you might as well close up shop now because your competitors who are will probably bury you in the next 18 months. Tech is evolving so fast it’s hard to keep up with. If you didn’t get a chance to listen to one of our previous episodes with Aaron Elder, the CEO here at Crelate, I encourage you to do so. He talked about that post AI world and what that means. The recruiting landscape has changed with the rise of AI technology. We’ve talked about it and and some conservative estimates show that AI driven changes will replace about 25% of jobs worldwide by 2026. And if we think recruiters or part of recruiting is immune, we probably need to think again. So let’s talk about some warning signs to show that you’re stuck on this KPI hamster wheel in the AI era.

Kortney Harmon [00:04:04]:
Number one, if you’re still doing the work AI could and should handle, that’s your first warning sign. Your team possibly is spending hours on tasks that AI systems could complete in minutes. It isn’t just efficient, it’s actually professional malpractice. In 2025, you’re falling behind by the minute. Number two warning sign is that your data lives in silos, your metrics live in different systems. And it happens. But the problem is that those systems don’t communicate. They’re preventing you from seeing the complete picture.

Kortney Harmon [00:04:40]:
In an AI era, isolated data just limits you and it actually is active sabotage towards your data and your growth of your firms. And number three, you’re looking backwards, not forwards. If you’re measuring what happened yesterday instead of what AI can predict tomorrow, you’re driving your business looking only in the review mirror. How’s that working out for you? The transition from startup to scale up is a big leap with unexpected hurdles. The same applies to transitioning from traditional recruiting to AI powered recruiting. Many aren’t going to make it, but for those who will, they’re going to thrive. So now that we’ve confronted the harsh reality, let’s talk solutions. I don’t care if it makes you uncomfortable.

Kortney Harmon [00:05:29]:
Your comfort zone is potentially what could be killing your business. We’re done being on this hamster wheel of trying to solve problems ourselves. It’s time to pull up the help chain. The help is AI and it’s non negotiable. It’s on like electricity in the background. So when you’re assessing your current recruiting KPIs through a lens of AI. You need to ask yourself, why are humans doing the work that AI should handle? If your recruiters are manually searching on LinkedIn, are you wasting human capital? Are you predicting or reporting? If your metrics can’t tell you which candidates will succeed before you hire them, your metrics might be a little dated. Can your platform learn or is it brain dead? A static system in a dynamic world isn’t just limiting, it’s suicide.

Kortney Harmon [00:06:21]:
So here’s the hard truth. If you’re still measuring the number of calls recruiters are making, instead of measuring AI powered engagement quality, the quality, not the quantity, you don’t just have a metrics problem, you potentially have a leadership problem. So let’s talk about how well functioning recruiting operations can deteriorate into exhausting cycles without the right technology foundation. This decline isn’t gradual anymore. It’s about acceleration towards being obsolete again. Did you see the episode with Aaron? He talked about the evolution of AI in the last six months. And what was being talked about last week. In this world where AI can source screen engage candidates around the clock, running your recruiting desk with purely human effort isn’t just efficient, it can be negligent.

Kortney Harmon [00:07:14]:
Here’s the warning signs. Your recruiting operations has shifted from a well oiled machine to the hamster wheel in the AI era. Number one, your recruiters are doing robot work. If your team is spending hours researching candidates when AI could be doing this automatically, we’re probably paying humans a premium rate to do the work that machines could do much better. Number two, your tech stack is a disconnected mess. We talked about those data silos. If your tools don’t talk to each other, you don’t have a technology ecosystem. It’s the junkyard.

Kortney Harmon [00:07:49]:
It’s not a platform to help your teams scale. And maybe, just maybe, your teams actually hate their jobs. When recruiters spend all day on repetitive tasks instead of building relationships, they’re very unhappy. It’s trying to keep up with all the things that happen in our work days that we just can’t keep up with. And the most dangerous thing about this KPI hamster wheel is that it feels like work. It’s just motion without progress. Your 60 hour work week means nothing if an AI system can’t produce better results in shorter time. Your expectations, your metrics, your output is going to change drastically in the next few months and even year.

Kortney Harmon [00:08:36]:
So let’s talk about seven steps to better recruiting metrics in this AI era. So let’s get Practical. I’m not here to coddle you. I’m here to save your business. The foundational success of AI integration isn’t a gentle evolution. It’s truly a radical transformation. The first thing you have to do in step one is you have to first stop measuring busy work. If you’re celebrating how many calls your recruiters are making, you’re measuring effort, not results.

Kortney Harmon [00:09:06]:
It’s like praising someone for how much they sweat instead of how far they ran. Step number two, we need to embrace AI specific outcomes. So in this AI era, if your human is handling a task that AI could. You’re not running a recruiting business, you’re running museum potentially of obsolete practices. We need to change how we think. Step number three, implement radical workflow automations. And many of you are doing this already. AI doesn’t just speed things up, it fundamentally transform what’s possible.

Kortney Harmon [00:09:40]:
If you’re just using AI to do old things faster, you can put a rocket engine on a horse cart. So hopefully you have those automations set up to help you move faster. Step number four, build a digital living platform, not a digital coffin. Most ATS systems aren’t just platforms. They’re where good data goes to die. A living platform evolves. Traditional systems just age. We don’t want to put things in a box just to have them in a box.

Kortney Harmon [00:10:13]:
Step number five, we have to deploy AI agents aggressively. Every hour your recruiter spends on research, initial outreach, or scheduling, an hour is wasted time. AI could handle those tasks for you. Step number six, redefine what actually recruiters do. And this is going to change so much in the next six months. The recruiter of 2025, who isn’t an AI wrangler, relationship builder and strategic advisor, isn’t a modern recruiter. We have to evolve how we’re handling our businesses and what a recruiter looks like in this day and age. So now step number seven is evolve or die.

Kortney Harmon [00:10:55]:
There’s no middle ground anymore. You’re either committed to continuous AI evolvement and evolution, or you’re preparing for your business’s obituary. So we’ve talked about the people and the process aspect of getting the KPI hamster wheel. Now for the harsh truth about technology. If your recruiting tech stack isn’t built on a living platform that continuously evolves with AI, it’s not an asset, it’s dragging you into irrelevance. So what exactly is a living platform? It’s the difference between survival and extinction. In recruiting, it evolves without you having to push it. Traditional systems require you to Upgrade them.

Kortney Harmon [00:11:36]:
Living platforms upgrade themselves. It’s putting something in the box. And while you put it in the box, it’s getting sunlight, it’s getting water, it’s getting nutrition. To grow and thrive and be bigger every day. It gets smarter every day. Your platform isn’t measurably more intelligent this month than last month. If it’s not alive, it’s decaying. It connects everything.

Kortney Harmon [00:12:00]:
Without human intervention, manual Data entry in 2025 isn’t just efficient, it’s something that shouldn’t happen anymore, alone, on its own. And a living platform doesn’t just store data for you, it activates it. Data sitting unused in your system isn’t an asset, it’s a wasted opportunity. We’ve all heard if it’s not in the system, it didn’t happen. So let me share a vision of what recruitment looks like with a living platform as your foundation. Imagine starting your day not with a to do list of manual tasks, but with a strategic briefing from your AI agent that you’ve already completed yesterday’s to do list while you slept. Your sourcing agent has already identified and Pre qualified 25 candidates overnight. Your outreach agent has personalized and sent communication with 40% response rate.

Kortney Harmon [00:12:50]:
Your analytics agent alerts you potential issues before they even become problems. This isn’t science fiction. It’s happening now. And if it’s not happening in your business, you’re already behind. So as we wrap up today’s episode, let me be crystal clear. The future of recruiting doesn’t belong to the hardest working or the most experienced any longer. It belongs to those who harness AI most effectively. Human effort without AI amplification is just becoming inefficient.

Kortney Harmon [00:13:19]:
The recruiters who thrive won’t be those working harder on the hamster wheel, but those who will leverage AI agents to handle routine tasks while focusing on their human talents is where it’s going to make the most impact. So if you want to continue to learn from experts on time management, networking, career development, overcoming burnout, that’s commendable. But if you’re not simultaneously implementing AI through your recruiting practices, then you’re arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. So I would encourage you to start by assessing your current technology foundation. Is it a static system that requires consistent manual updates, or is it a living platform that evolves with the rapidly changing recruiting landscape that we are in today? The future isn’t just coming, it’s already here. Dividing our industry into two groups. Those who embrace AI and those who will work for them. Thank you so much for your time today.

Kortney Harmon [00:14:16]:
This is an ever changing topic that we will continue to discuss and bring to the forefront of our industry. So stay tuned as we continue to talk about the recruiting world. In a post AI era, evolution isn’t just optional, it’s existential. That’s all for today’s episode of FDE Express. I’m Kortney Harmon with Crelate. If you have any questions or topics you’d like for us to cover in future episodes, please feel free to submit them to [email protected] or ask us live next session. And don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast. Wherever you listen and see, sign up for our monthly events to keep learning and growing your business.

Kortney Harmon [00:15:01]:
Thanks for tuning in to FDE Express, a short and sweet format of the full desk experience. We’ll see you next time.