[Podcast] FDE+ | From Rolodex to AI: Why Relationships Still Win in Recruiting with Denise Chaffin, CEO of Top Source Talent

What happens when recruiting becomes faster—but less personal? Host Kortney Harmon sits down with Denise Chaffin, CEO of TopSource Talent and host of the Talking TA podcast, to explore why relationship intelligence remains one of the most valuable competitive advantages in an increasingly automated industry.

Drawing on nearly four decades in talent acquisition, Denise traces the evolution of recruiting from Rolodexes and classified ads to AI-powered platforms. She shares why trust, transparency, and follow-through still shape candidate and client experiences—and how recruiters can use technology to strengthen relationships rather than replace them. From building influence through consistent communication to turning ATS platforms into relationship memory systems, Denise offers a practical framework for balancing efficiency with authentic human connection.

Discover why the recruiters who thrive in the AI era will be the ones who use technology to scale trust—not replace it.

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Denise Chaffin [00:00:00]:
When I think about the candidates that I interview, what they remember isn’t the applicant tracking system process that they followed when they applied for a position with one of my clients. What they remember is my follow ups, how I treated them through the interview process. Did I give them good feedback during and after? Did I not ghost them? Did I treat them well through the process? Did I follow up with them afterwards? That’s what they remember. They remember my transparency and they remember my honesty. They remember how I made them feel.

Kortney Harmon [00:00:36]:
Hey guys. Kortney Harmon, Host of fde. In case you missed it, we recently hosted a live virtual event and it was one for the books. We brought together some of the best thought leaders in the recruiting and staffing industry for two full days of real, no fluff conversations. And what’s actually working right now, from building trust with clients to using AI without losing your edge, to growing revenue through relationships. These sessions were absolutely incredible and we didn’t want you to miss out. So we turned every single session into its own episode. And over the coming weeks, we’re dropping them one by one right here.

Kortney Harmon [00:01:16]:
Each episode is a standalone session from the event, so whether you’re tuning in for the first time or you were there live and you want to revisit all of your favorites, there’s something for you. Stay tuned. You’re going to want to hear from every every single one of our speakers. Trust me. Enjoy.

Kortney Harmon [00:01:37]:
For anyone who doesn’t know, I am also going to put Denise’s LinkedIn here in the chat. Please be sure to connect with her because she does so much. She actually has been in the industry for over 30 years. She is a CEO of TopSource Talent LLC, a minority women owned staffing firm based out of Phoenix. She specializes in talent acquisition, workforce solutions,

Denise Chaffin [00:02:00]:
and she’s also the host of the

Kortney Harmon [00:02:02]:
Talking Ta podcast where she brings HR and recruiting leadership together to share what’s actually working. Hopefully she’s going to be telling us just that as she’s talking. Automation is smart. Relationships win. So she’s going to be giving us some great information and this session is about the competitive edge you already have if you’re using it right. So please welcome Denise. Denise, thank you so much for spending time out of your busy day to come talk to us today.

Denise Chaffin [00:02:27]:
Oh, you bet. Thank you, Kortney. I really appreciate. What a nice introduction. I wasn’t expecting that.

Kortney Harmon [00:02:33]:
Oh, I love it. And I am, I’m super excited that our paths have crossed and we actually got to bring you on the podcast because I know you as well as many other People that we’ve had on here so far do so much for the industry and just try to give back and really have great insights. So thank you for all that you do in the industry.

Denise Chaffin [00:02:52]:
Well, thank you. I appreciate it. I really do. Yes, I’ve been in this industry a really long time. You know, there are a lot of issues that are coming up right now and concerns about our AI we’re being chased by it or are we chasing it? Right. So I just want to kind of put some people at ease, I think, with this, but also too, to kind of just center us a little bit here on what is important in every industry. So this conversation is about relationship intelligence. And, you know, but before I jump into it, let me tell you a little bit about who I am.

Denise Chaffin [00:03:32]:
So it was in 1986. I was working for the newspaper, Arizona Republic, Arizona’s largest newspaper. And I was working in classified ads. I was working in sales. I was a sales associate for them. And this was a time when, gosh, paper routes were still a big deal and people were using the newspaper classified ad section to post jobs. Employers were posting jobs there and people were looking for jobs. And it was funny because a Sunday paper was like the biggest paper for all classified ads, whether you were selling a boat or a car, your house, or advertising for anything, you know, but the want ads we called them, you know, was one of the largest sections.

Denise Chaffin [00:04:16]:
And people, if you were a job seeker, you would go out and buy that paper because you would keep it all week long and you would use your highlighter pen and you’d be circling, you know, jobs in the, that you were interested in. It’s different today because now we’re using our mobile phones and our laptops and our iPads, you know, to swipe, you know, back then the swiping was the paper, you know, itself. And of course getting newspaper ink all over your fingers, which was fun, but, you know, it’s funny, but people would actually use the newspaper and they would hand deliver their resumes to the addresses that were in the help wanted ads or they would mail them. So it was a little bit more of a complicated scenario, I guess, you know, when we were, when we were doing that. But anyway, about two years in, I attended a funeral and I happened to bump into an acquaintance. And my acquaintance and I were chit chatting. We hadn’t seen each other in a long time. And I told him I was working for the newspaper, as in sales.

Denise Chaffin [00:05:15]:
And he mentioned to me that he was a recruiter for an executive search firm. So what came to mind for me was my own father, who had been a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division of the US army, and rest his soul. Anyway, so I conjured up this vision of an Uncle Sam poster, the I want you for the US army poster. I don’t know why, but anyway, that was what came to mind for me. And so it was about maybe two or three days later after the funeral that this acquaintance contacted me and he mentioned to me that, you know, he had thought about our conversation. And he asked me, you know, would you be interested in talking to me further about a potential career in. We called it recruiting back then. We didn’t.

Denise Chaffin [00:06:06]:
Talent acquisition was not a term yet. So I said, well, maybe, you know, and he kind of gave me a little bit more information about what he did as a recruiter and he verified for me because I asked right up front, is this for the military or is this for the Army? He said, no, no, no, no, this is something completely different. You know, he said, a lot of people think that. But anyway, honestly, I, you know, I’m just thinking right now, I don’t recall when the, the executive search industry really started. I think it was back maybe about 20 years before that, or maybe 10 or 15 years before that. Anyway, so he clarified that for me, but he asked me to come in and meet with him and his. His boss, the president of the search firm. So I did.

Denise Chaffin [00:06:45]:
We had a great conversation. You know, by the end of our meeting, they offered me a position. And so little did I know when I left that meeting that this was the start of a really long career in talent acquisition. So here we are 38 years later, and again, my name is Denise Chaffin, and like Kortney said, I’m the CEO of TopSource Talent and also a host now for the Talking Ta podcast. And we started that about three years ago. You know, when I stepped into this industry, we had certain industry tools that we were using. But honestly, the tools that, the relationship that these tools supported, you know, were really dynamic. They really were.

Denise Chaffin [00:07:26]:
And, you know, today I think our focus is more on the technology. And I think that with AI again, you know, embedded in our industry now, you know, there’s a lot of concern, you know, about the tools that we’re using. But, you know, a lot of times now we’re asked, because we are using so much technology, it’s. What is your tech stack anyway? So our tech stack, as we call it, a little tongue tied there in this industry back in the 80s was really basic. We had a Desk phone, landline phone, as you see there, we had a fax machine. We thought that we were really high tech with a fax machine. And then I had what I called my wheel of fortune. For me, my wheel of fortune was actually this little ferris wheel of 3 by 5 index cards.

Denise Chaffin [00:08:19]:
As you can see there, that’s really what it looked like. And I would stuff business cards in it. It was in alphabetical order. Everything imaginable was in this Rolodex because this was where I stored all of my contacts. I guess you could, you know, kind of compare it to a non digital primitive version of the early cloud and, and this wheel of fortune, not to be confused with the game show, you know, where Vanna White is turning the letters, you know, was, was my business. I mean that was, you know, what I referred to all the time. And you know, honestly it was, it worked. It really did.

Denise Chaffin [00:08:57]:
Because we had back then, like I said, a landline. Our business was built on conversations in person and on the phone. You know, we were using our landline to call people, to set up meetings, to recruit people, to talk to clients. We did not have yet email, we didn’t have text messages, we didn’t have the Internet. None of that was around. So kind of think about that for a minute. You know, if you could go back that many years, would you have welcomed this kind of a, this level of connection with people? It was actually kind of fun. You know, it was, it was different, it was a different era.

Denise Chaffin [00:09:35]:
So moving forward, one of the things that happened, you know, when we, when I started this business is there was two kinds of recruiting back then and still are, it’s still this way even today. We had what we called corporate recruiting and we had what we called agency recruiting. And of course I was on the agency side and on the agency side of corporate recruiting. It was kind of messy, it was disorganized. I mean, we had manila folders everywhere. Again, we weren’t using technology and with the corporate side, I think it was a little more structured. It was very slow, it was very deliberate. But again, there was no technology.

Denise Chaffin [00:10:15]:
We are still just using telephones and we are using in person meetings. We had a lot of lunches with people. We did a lot of happy hours, did a lot of on site visits. We brought people into our offices. It was really quite amazing. We are also attending conferences back then. And I think that what happened was with conferences, I think that it gave us an opportunity to meet up with people, you know, have conversations with them. And you’re Going to kind of see me draw some parallels between then and now.

Denise Chaffin [00:10:47]:
And it’s kind of fun to do because a lot has changed, and then in some respects, a lot hasn’t changed. So, anyhow, going back to our conferences, this is before smartphones, of course, this is before email, before text messages, all that kind of fun stuff. Our relationships that we had with people were actually a lot deeper. There was a lot more to our relationships. We didn’t have the transactional kind of stuff that we have now because we have a lot more context with people now, with technology. One of the things that happened, I recall at a conference that I attended about three years ago because I started going to conferences again after Covid, because Covid really got a lot of attention for bringing people back together once we were allowed to get back together, and conferences started up again. So we kind of went through this period without them, especially during the whole Covid first two or three years of COVID But anyway, when I started going back to conferences, the one thing that I noticed was I had incredible conversations with people. I was doing some interviews for the podcast, and I remember meeting this guy, and it was his first time attending a conference.

Denise Chaffin [00:12:02]:
And I asked him, I said, why are you here? Why are you attending this conference? And he said, well, actually, he said, I came here. This is my first time. He said, and it’s really incredible to me that when I am talking to people, I’m actually going to remember them better, I think, than I do, you know, talking to them through a Slack channel or a text message or email. He said, because I’m meeting them face to face. I thought, wow, that’s a pretty. That’s pretty observant perspective. And I told him, I said, you know, that brings up a really good point. When you are meeting people face to face, those are your closest connections.

Denise Chaffin [00:12:37]:
So I loved him saying that to me. Another woman I spoke to or spoke with at another conference, maybe another year later, she’s a CEO of a company that is a big ATS company. And she said, I love coming to conferences because it’s kind of like the new water cooler, which is why I picked this picture. It’s kind of like the new water cooler, you know, where everyone together, she’s, I can meet my vendors, I can meet my clients, I can meet other people in my organization that might be working in different locations. So it was kind of great to get her perspective on it as well, you know, but it kind of just drove home that point, you know, that we really desire human connection and so people really want to have those conversations. So when you look back in the 80s, you know, before technology and we look back now post Covid and how people are like re engaging, there’s, you know, you can draw some parallels there, right. It was an exciting time. There was still as the technology kind of picked up, it was just, I mean, my goodness, moving so fast anyway, moving forward.

Denise Chaffin [00:13:45]:
So one of the things too that’s happened over time because of technology, I kind of have to ask this question. On our digital systems that we have now and with all of the technology connections that we are engaged with are our digital systems remembering our relationships that matter, you know, and that’s coming up for me because I believe that we still need that human connection. And I try as hard as I can to get on a plane every so often to go and meet with clients and to meet face to face, you know, with people. I’m potentially going to interview or present to a client if I can, if it’s for a local company or attend job fairs. That was another thing. I loved attending job fairs, you know, way back in the day. And I think that we still have them from time to time, but I don’t see those as much as we used to have. But the one business practice that I brought into my career early on was cultivating and developing relationships with salespeople and sales team salespeople are our the best resources for any industry.

Denise Chaffin [00:14:58]:
They know their clients, they know the competitors, they know who’s buying, they know which companies are expanding, which companies are contracting. So I always like to cultivate those relationships with salespeople because we would exchange information. I do believe that talent acquisition in itself is a sales oriented industry. You know, we’re kind of like, I’ve always used the analogy, we’re kind of like real estate agents, you know, instead of, you know, just, you know, trying to sell somebody a house, you’re also trying to work with, you know, the buyer and the seller at the same time. This is kind of the same thing with talent acquisition. You know, you’re working with your clients and you’re working with the candidates that you’re bringing into your clients organizations. So anyway, with the sales teams though, I mean, having those relationships has paid dividends over the years. A lot of these people I’ve stayed in contact with for many, many years, you know, because I’ve been in this business and I’m still working, you know, other people are retiring, I’m not.

Denise Chaffin [00:16:00]:
But anyway, you know, this is what I’m referring to when I talk about relationship intelligence, because relationship intelligence really, you know, I’ll go into it a little bit more in more detail, but it’s, it’s just having that knowledge, you know, that innate knowledge, you know, about human connection. So going back though, to our technology, does anybody remember dial up? I mean, dial up was our first connection to the Internet and the sounds that it made. You had to have a landline, telephone, you know, for. Yeah, yeah, the sound story. In fact, I was going to try to actually have the sound on here, but it wasn’t going to work with these lines anyhow. Yes, I can still remember the sound as well, but anyhow, with the dial up or the Internet connection, it was our first foray into the whole technology world of technology. Of course, it’s never been the same. This is actually, though, even though we had the technology with the Internet, I’m just going back here in my own memory bank.

Denise Chaffin [00:17:06]:
It was slow to start. Just keep that in mind. It wasn’t like everybody had computers on their desk just because the Internet had started. That was not the case at all. You know, in 1991 was the very first website that went up. And I know it doesn’t seem that long ago, you know, especially with, let me think about it, from night. From the very first website to now is how many years. I guess I need to do the math here, you know, 35 years.

Denise Chaffin [00:17:32]:
Anyway, we have, by 1993, we had full access to the Internet. So just in two years. The first website, though, is what I wanted to share with you. With you is the world wide Web. And it was a publicly accessible service to everyone. And so it took people time to get modems, to get the dial up, to have the extra lion installed in their home, to get computers. A lot of people didn’t even have computers yet. Right.

Denise Chaffin [00:18:01]:
So it took time for all of this to happen. But anyway, by 1993, the Internet was accessible to everyone. And then as we kind of rolled forward here, the dot com era came. I want to say it was maybe 1995 was when the dot com era started. So once we had the Internet, I mean, things just like flew forward. So the dot com era was an interesting time. There were a lot of new companies starting. They all wanted to be online.

Denise Chaffin [00:18:31]:
Everybody wanted a dot com after their name. Any new idea, any new business went up on the, you know, went up on the new Internet that we had. The problem though was there are a lot of companies that didn’t make it. So it was about 2000. In fact, it was in January of 2000, we had Super Bowl 34, and Super Bowl 34 actually had a number of companies. I think it was like 20% of the companies that advertise for that particular super bowl were.com companies. Unfortunately, though, a couple of months later, the dot com bubble that we had built burst and a lot of companies just didn’t make it. Some of the companies that did, though, are companies you would recognize.

Denise Chaffin [00:19:15]:
Amazon, ebay, Google was another one. Yahoo I think was one. So there were several that made it through. But unfortunately by 2002, a lot of these companies were hurting. Because in 2001, the end of 2001, we had 911 happen, which really affected the stock market. So you had the bubble burst and you had 9 11. So 2002 was a tough year. Anyway, moving forward.

Denise Chaffin [00:19:45]:
So around this time, my little Rolodex, I kept it, don’t get me wrong, I kept it until 2020. I was not going to get rid of that thing. I held too much information. And I always thought, oh, what if something happens to, you know, the Internet? So I held on to it. But I did kind of shove it into a drawer because by this time now I’ve got a desktop computer, I have my, my modem, I’m online, I’m sending emails. It’s all fabulous, right? But as we kind of went forward, other things were happening as well. So now we’re doing digital networking. And I can recall in 2000 going to a conference with a number of my engineering colleagues for.

Denise Chaffin [00:20:29]:
I was working for a semiconductor company at the time. So there’s this group of engineers that I had gone to this conference and another recruiter, my friend Yvonne. So she and I went to this conference. It was up in the Bay Area. And while we were there, it was a very technical conference. A lot of these engineers were showing. I sort of got this picture looks exactly like how we were all standing around, they were showing us how to use our phones to connect with each other digitally without a business card, which it was fun. It was amazing to be able to like, you know, introduce us to this idea that we could actually store our contacts in our cell phones now.

Denise Chaffin [00:21:09]:
Not just on our desktops, but, but now in our cell phones as well. So, I mean, look, just in a couple of years, you know how this technology is rolling forward, right? And the only problem with that, though, is I still like those, the business cards. In fact, I was at a conference in September of this last year. There was a big electronics conference here in Phoenix. And I came back with a stack of business cards just 2, 3 inches thick, people are still using them. I think that we have learned, you know, the capability of digital networking. I think it’s great, I think it’s great for storing information, storing our contacts. But sometimes we just still, I think like the tactical feel of business cards and just like having them.

Denise Chaffin [00:21:51]:
Because, I mean, obviously I’m not the only one taking them to conferences if I’m coming back here to my office with a stack of them, right? So some habits die hard, which is fine. And like I said, you know, as you can tell, I kind of hold on to things, you know, my Rolodex business cards. So learning a little bit about me here. So by this time too. So the recruiting accelerates. Oh my gosh. Now we have, we’re moving faster, we’re connecting with our hiring managers, our business units. Now we’re doing a lot more things transactionally through the Internet.

Denise Chaffin [00:22:25]:
But now job boards and ATS platforms happen. So it was in 1996, we had the very first applicant tracking system was called resumex. And I was working for Motorola at the time and it was really quite amazing. Now we could send resumes directly to our hiring managers and people instead of. Remember back I told you about the story about the newspaper and people would hand deliver their resumes or they’d mail them in. Not anymore. Now they were sending them in digitally. You know, they were still using the newspaper, but now there was an address where you could literally digitally send your resume in.

Denise Chaffin [00:23:02]:
So now people were creating them online. This was new, sending them into us. And now we’re able to review them and then forward them onto the hiring managers for the first time. And this was like a huge savings. You know, when we talk about right now AI and we talk about AI taking over our jobs, AI is not going to take our jobs. Our jobs are going to change though, just like they did back then. So instead of physically picking up a stack of resumes and hand delivering them to the hiring managers around the office, of course I did get a lot more exercise back then doing that. But now we could just go ahead and send them off and kind of keep moving forward with our day to day work.

Denise Chaffin [00:23:40]:
We didn’t have to stop and do that manual delivery of these resumes. So that was really pretty cool. So Resmix was the first one on the scene and that was in 1996 by, I think it was in 1999, I started using monster.com. so this is now when the job boards are coming up. Job boards were great. Monster came up in 1999 we were using Career Builder as well. In 1995, that wasn’t. We didn’t use that in our office that much yet.

Denise Chaffin [00:24:09]:
Not until I started working for on semiconductor. And that’s when I think we were using Career Builder there, but right afterwards, I mean, so those were the first two on the scene was Monster and Career Builder. And then after that we had job hotjobs.com, dice.com, ladders indeed came around later. That was in 2004. But anyway, so we are using these and not only that, but we are integrating them now with our email. We are able to integrate the ats, the job boards and our email and it was huge. But if, I mean, look at the timeline here, how quickly that happened. So again, drawing the parallels between then and now because we’re doing the same thing with AI, you know, things are happening a lot faster.

Denise Chaffin [00:24:54]:
You know, we’re trying to, you know, learn this new technology as we’re trying to learn to incorporate it into our day to day business. Right. So, but fear not, we made it through then, we’ll make it through now. So I’m just here to tell you that. All right, it’s what maybe the late 90s, early, early 2000s now we’ve got on the go recruiting. So mobile meets, you know, the ats, mobile meets email. I mean we’re, we’re now starting to, you know, do things with our cell phones and again with the smartphones, they came out in 2007. I think that we were actually doing things digitally before then a little bit.

Denise Chaffin [00:25:32]:
But it was in 2007 that we really took off with the mobile applications and starting to do things with our phone. And of course, I mean, we can never go back from that now. I mean, right? We’re all hooked to our cell phones anyway. So we had on the go recruiting. What that’s done for us, it has given us, it’s expanded our outreach to people. And the fact, I love what Sean was saying earlier about. Oh, I’m sorry, it wasn’t Sean, it was Shad. I’m sorry, Shad.

Denise Chaffin [00:25:59]:
That was a great presentation by the way. But what Shad was sharing earlier though too about, you know, the outreach, I think it was, yeah, we have that now. We had hiring process is faster. Everything is just speedy, speedy. But what happens though to our relationships? Let’s go back to that for a moment. It became super transactional because we had so many more, you know, my little Rolodex that held what, 500 cards in it I mean, those were all my contacts. Now we’ve got thousands of contacts. How are we going to stay in touch with all these people? Right, because there’s so many of them and we want to do a good job staying in touch with them.

Denise Chaffin [00:26:38]:
But you know, our devices have just kept getting smarter and smarter over the years. Does anybody here remember this Jeopardy. Three day challenge? So IBM put their AI and I’m gonna go ahead and introduce AI here up to compete with these two top contestants for Jeopardy. AI won. Watson was the. With the IBM system. Watson won. Actually, Watson won a million dollars.

Denise Chaffin [00:27:06]:
But I think after everything was said and done, Watson walked away with about 37, $38,000 or. Yeah, yeah, about 37, 38,000. I think I’d have to check on that. Sorry, thought I had that number in my head. Anyway, so let’s fast forward. So now let’s look at today. We have over 100 applicant tracking systems today. So you look at 1996, you look at 30 years later.

Denise Chaffin [00:27:34]:
In 30 years we’ve gone from one app or from one ATS, as we call them, Applicant Tracking system, to now over 100 platforms that we’re all using today that are all active. And it’s really quite amazing. That’s what, three a year over the last 30 years? I mean, three new companies. So when you think of it, you know, it’s like we get confused, we get baffled. I mean, it’s daunting, right? And I love to what Shad was talking about, you know, when we’re talking to customers, I can’t even imagine, you know, working for one of the ATS companies with all that competition out there. I mean, and especially right now with AI driving so much of the backend processes for atss. Here’s the thing though, and I’m going to dive into this a little bit further now. Have we replaced relationship building with efficiency with all of this? Because that is a concern and it’s something that has been really kind of in the front of what I do for a while now.

Denise Chaffin [00:28:35]:
You know, we’re in a very people oriented business, but with all of this technology, what are we losing? And I had brought it up in an earlier slide. You know, our relationships have become super transactional with people because we’re trying to keep up with so many, you know, how do we prioritize our relationships and prioritize our contacts? If you think about the notes that we used, a lot of us, you know, when we were, when I was first in this business and before technology happened, you know, it Was really quite interesting because, you know, all those notes we took, we hand wrote them. And honestly, I retained a lot more of that information. Handwriting it, I think of those Rolodex cards and typing it into a digital format, probably because there were less contacts at the time as well. And now there’s a lot more of them. Plus, I mean, how much is the technology doing for us versus doing it ourselves? And I had a podcast yesterday with Dan Burris, and he is a keynote speaker. And we were talking about this. We were talking about the fact that how are we retaining the information people who are using AI too much to do a lot of their presentations or do a lot of their work for them.

Denise Chaffin [00:29:56]:
How are they going to learn and retain information if they’re allowing AI to do a lot of it for them? Where are we going to draw the line here? I mean, AI is helpful, we need it. But at the same time, all of those old notes that I took back then, back in the 80s and 90s, seriously, I can still remember what some of those notes look like. Where with digital technology, it’s a little different, but we need them because now we’ve got speed versus memory. So automation has increased speed, but it has reduced our connection with people. And we need to kind of get back to that. I mean, this is important. We need to find this balance between connection and between the speed of technology, especially now with AI. So what is relationship intelligence? It’s not a buzzword.

Denise Chaffin [00:30:50]:
Relationship intelligence is not something that we have to practice. You know, it comes to us naturally. It is technology enabled, but it’s guided by us as humans. And I think that that’s a really important factor here in this because now we get to look at it from a kind of, you know, a higher viewpoint. So three things happen here with automation. We have data intelligence that tells us what has happened, right? Gives us data on things that have happened in the past. We have automation that tells us what to do next and points us in the right direction, which is great. But then we have relationship intelligence that tells us who and what matters.

Denise Chaffin [00:31:35]:
But we also have now automation fatigue and we need to address that. So, like, I know with candidates, probably our clients as well. And again, I loved your presentation, Shad. I mean, it was really great. And you brought some of these points up. But candidates, when we’re dealing with candidates, there is so much out there now, like I was talking about with all these ATS’s, with all of these job boards, with, you know, you’ve got LinkedIn now, you’ve got Slack, you’ve got the inner. Oh, you’ve got the. Indeed.

Denise Chaffin [00:32:07]:
You know. Okay, so. And just taking a step back here too. So we had LinkedIn started in 2003 and then in 2004 we had, I want to say it was YouTube, but. So you had LinkedIn, YouTube, indeed, Twitter and Facebook. That was the other one. Five of them. Within like a three year period they hit the market and we’re doing all, we’re working with all of these different platforms.

Denise Chaffin [00:32:38]:
So yeah, I can relate to the girl with her head on the desk because it’s like, oh my God, how did I contact John Doe yesterday? Did I contact him through Slack, through email, through LinkedIn? Oh, I don’t even remember. There’s just so many. So. But candidates are also, and our clients are also getting a lot of messages from us. There’s just a lot of stuff comes in through email and through LinkedIn. And how much of it is. How much, how many of these messages are real messages? How many of them are bulk email campaigns? Because we can tell a difference. We can tell as people when we’re being pursued or being processed.

Denise Chaffin [00:33:20]:
And I just think that happens for a lot of us. So what about that? How, how are we going to navigate and manage that trust? So the one thing that I have learned in my career, throughout my career, is that speed builds pipelines, but trust builds influence. So when people can trust that we are contacting them directly, that we’re not just mass emailing them. And it’s not to say we shouldn’t have campaigns, we need to have campaigns. But then how are we going to follow up and what are those campaigns going to look like? We need to like take a really serious look at that. Do you guys remember this little guy here, Wally, it was a movie, was in 2008, and Wally was this little robot and he worked alone and he was like 700 years doing the same thing and he was working, I think that he was processing parts or something like that. Anyway, he finally reached out and made a connection. And even back then in 2008 when this film was done, you figured that was what, 18 years ago? Even then he needed that human connection to kind of make things change.

Denise Chaffin [00:34:33]:
So the human connection that he made was what mattered. And we still need that because trust builds influence. When you reach out to people directly, whether you’re reaching out to clients or you reach out to colleagues or in my case, candidates, I’m trying to who are those people that will answer my calls all these years later, even if I don’t have something direct or even if they don’t need me to support them like a client, do they pick up the phone and take my call? If so, that’s influence. Influence. We build that over a period of time. Trust is influence anyway. Automation though, without memory. Let’s talk about that for a moment.

Denise Chaffin [00:35:17]:
So automation without memory and process without connection erodes trust. And I think that what happens is if we wind up, like I was mentioning, we wind up really focusing too much on the automation and we focus more on the mass emailing or the big campaigns and we’re not making those direct contacts with people, we’re not having those one on one conversations. It is going to erode trust and people aren’t going to trust us as much. We want to make sure that we are still building trust, building influence. Because behavior changes, you know, the more that we connect with people, behaviors change. If behaviors change, trust changes, influence changes. It’s a chain reaction. Right? So let’s go to the next what people remember about us.

Denise Chaffin [00:36:07]:
You know, talking about trust, talking about influence. When I think about the candidates that I interview, what they remember isn’t the applicant tracking system process that they followed when they applied for a position with one of my clients. What they remember is my follow ups, how I treated them through the interview process, did I give them good feedback during and after, Did I not ghost them? Did I treat them well through the process, did I follow up with them afterwards? That’s what they remember. They remember my transparency and they remember my honesty. They remember how I made them feel. Same thing with clients. With clients, they’ll remember maybe an extra step that I took or extra time that I took to maybe craft an award winning job description for them that they were getting stuck with or maybe I helped an indecisive candidate to the finish line. You know, those are the types of things that a client will remember.

Denise Chaffin [00:37:10]:
Also, you know, with our referrals, people who help us with job searches, people who give us names, people who share information about the competition, you know, they’re going to remember the gestures that I, you know, like if I give them a little gift, if I, you know, give them a Starbucks card or I give them a commission, whatever it is, they’re going to remember how I made them feel before, during and after that whole process. These are the things and not just how they feel, but how they, how we make them feel about themselves. So let’s look at our, our relationship ecosystem. You know, in our industry, in the recruiting industry, we’ve got of course, our candidates, our Clients, our referrals, and our peers. These people, though, are not a database. These people are. They are our community. They are our ecosystem.

Denise Chaffin [00:38:03]:
So how are we going to treat them? How are we going to stay in contact with them? How do we kind of keep the ball rolling and keep those relationships active, keep them connected with us, keep them connected with each other? Because we are connectors in the industry I’m in. And I used the analogy earlier about real estate agents. We’re all connectors. We connect people to each other. And I love, too, what Shad said earlier. Even if you don’t have a job for somebody, even if you don’t have a particular candidate to give to a client, but they need help with something, just giving them your help, connecting them to the right person, giving them a lead, giving them a suggestion, just being willing to help people. That is part of our ecosystem. That is part of what we do.

Denise Chaffin [00:38:53]:
And I love the fact that I got to listen to Shad’s presentation because I kept going. Yep, that’s what I’m going to be talking about as well. It’s important. And you see, you cannot do enough to drive these points home. So now we have the ats, all right. And I told you, we’ve got over a hundred of them now. Right? So let’s reframe it. So let’s take and use the ATS now as a memory system, as a relationship memory system.

Denise Chaffin [00:39:20]:
All those cards I was talking about earlier, all the little notes that I used to take in my Rolodex, now I’m putting them in here now. We need the ATS to kind of become our memory for us, to help remind us when we need to reach out to people. It also needs to remind us about maybe milestones that people are making. I love the fact that LinkedIn does that, and I do. And I really think that LinkedIn is, even though it’s a monopoly, has really provided for us a great ecosystem on staying together, being able to watch when people hit new milestones. A new job, a new location, a new title, a promotion, or if there’s layoffs, I mean, gosh, I mean, how many people have we seen go through layoffs? And again, you know, reaching out to people that we know that have been affected by layoffs, and if nothing else, maybe just help them with their resume. Helping them, you know, giving them some suggestions on places they can go. One thing that I have been sharing with people who’ve been affected by layoffs are fringe industries that they can reach out to.

Denise Chaffin [00:40:20]:
There are a lot of fringe industries that people don’t even think about that might need their help. So offering, you know, to counsel and coach people and give advice, there’s nothing in it or nothing to it, I should say, you know, in terms of just offering your support. So. But these are the types of things, these types of notes need to go into an ats. You know, what someone’s geographic preferences are, what their timing is. Oh my gosh, let’s talk about timing, right? Because you have a lot of people who can’t make a switch right now. They’ve got kids, you know, that are going to graduate from high school at the end of the year or their spouse is working in a position that they need to stay in so they can’t make a geographic move. Just all those types of things that needs to go into the ats.

Denise Chaffin [00:41:08]:
We need our ATS now to become a relationship memory system to help us so that we’re not so transactional, you know, with our relationships. So I like this one because this is kind of coming up. This is a new term, a new work term, I should say. So after every search that we do for a client, after every higher that we have, you know, we need to ask ourselves a couple of questions. You know, who are the people who, the other stellar candidates that didn’t get selected. Because oftentimes I know for myself if I present candidates for a position, I’m not presenting just one, I’ll present three or four, maybe even five, you know, depending on what the position is. But only one person’s going to get picked because there’s only one position. So what happens to those other candidates? Right? Those are the people we need to be keeping in contact with.

Denise Chaffin [00:42:00]:
Those are the people who we need to stay on top of because oh my gosh, you know, they’re placeable, number one. Number two, they’re in our network now. You know, we’ve had conversations with them. We don’t want to just forget them in the industry. They’re calling them silver medalists now. So how do we stay in contact with them? Right, Follow up strategy. We’re going to have intentional follow ups that we need to build meaningful relationships. But this is where AI can help us.

Denise Chaffin [00:42:30]:
AI and combined with the ATS technology can help us get there. We can have periodic check ins. And again, these notes can be notes that we write ourselves and have AI send them out for us at a particular time. Again, congratulating people on their milestones, any kind of thoughtful touch point people when they get married, have children. There was one Woman that I did a podcast interview with not too long ago, and she said that she keeps in contact with kids who graduate from high school. She still makes those notes, but she keeps them, you know, stored digitally. But she’s still making notes and reminders. She has reminders come to her, you know, so and so’s kid is graduating from high school or they’re getting married or they’re getting ready to move, or they’re getting ready to, you know, have their in laws come and live with them, whatever the case may be.

Denise Chaffin [00:43:20]:
That’s how she’s keeping in touch with them. It’s not on work related stuff. It’s more on personal related stuff. So there you go. All right now, speaking of relationship memory, so let’s talk about relationship management. So let’s manage some of the relationships in a way that it doesn’t sound so, I don’t know, kind of boring, I guess. But when you build relationships with people, it’s quite, it’s quite amazing when you do stay in contact with them, what you’ll find over time. So I’m going to give you a story.

Denise Chaffin [00:43:53]:
I mean, one of the things that door is on here because we just have to keep the door open for everybody, right? And that’s why I put it on there. But there was a woman, it was in 2008, who I had recruited for a software configuration engineer position for one of my clients. It was a DoD or Department of Defense client in Southern California. And they wanted somebody, they were very rigid that they wanted somebody who had a completed bachelor’s degree. And that was more prevalent back then. I think we’re seeing it lighten up a little bit now. But anyway, so I had recruited Erin and she was still working on her degree. She still had one year left.

Denise Chaffin [00:44:33]:
And so the company wouldn’t hire her. They interviewed her. They loved her. I mean, she was a good culture fit, she had all the right skills. They sought, you know, a career path for her. But they said, you know, I mean, our requirements are she’s got to have a completed degree. So I kind of, you know, said, all right, sorry, Erin, go ahead and finish your degree, but let’s stay in touch. And I did stay in touch with her and I stayed in touch with her the whole year.

Denise Chaffin [00:44:58]:
So what happened was we continued to interview people and we interviewed several people actually over the next year, but they weren’t. Aaron, they really wanted someone like Erin and there was something about her that they. That just resonated. And again, it was, I think, more of a connection Just that, you know, collaboration, they. They really liked her. Anyhow, going back. So a year later, 12 months later, we still had not hired anybody for that position. We interviewed several people, but never hired anybody.

Denise Chaffin [00:45:29]:
Anyway, Erin was finishing her degree, so I had. Because I had stayed in contact with her, she and I, you know, were staying up to speed on the position for my client. And I told them, I said, you know, she’s getting ready to finish her degree. And quite truthfully, there are other people pursuing her because there were. There were other companies that knew she was getting ready to finish her degree. But luckily, because that relationship was there, she followed us. And they gave her an offer contingent on her degree being completed, which it was going to be completed within a couple weeks. And she accepted their.

Denise Chaffin [00:46:04]:
Their position with my client. And so it was a happy ending. It was great. It was unfortunately took, you know, delay. It was delayed by a year because of this education requirement. But like I said, I think things are loosening up a little bit now. But going back, though, to her, she was one example of somebody I stayed in contact with. And even though there were other companies pursuing her, she had this relationship with me.

Denise Chaffin [00:46:28]:
So it was fabulous because, again, happy ending. So let’s talk about this. Let’s talk about the trust metrics then, of re engaging with people, of referrals. And then we have, you know, what we call now boomerang hires. And boomerang hires are people who leave a company and then maybe go someplace else, but you stay in contact with them. Let’s say you’re working for the same client that they left, you know, two or three years ago, but let’s say now the new client or that client has a new executive team. And maybe they left because they didn’t like the management. And this actually happened several times throughout my career.

Denise Chaffin [00:47:06]:
One time that comes to mind right now is another semiconductor company. They were looking for a ceramics engineer, and they were having a really hard time because these people had to have these specific skills, of course. But anyway, they wound up asking me, you know, to do this search. And I went and I asked them, I said, would you take somebody back who used to work for the company? He said, oh, hands down, of course. So I reached out to a few people and I got this one guy in particular who had left. I asked him, I said, why did you leave? And he said, well, I didn’t like the manager I was working for. Turns out that manager was no longer there, so he was willing to take a step and come back. And as far as I know he’s still there, so they rehired him.

Denise Chaffin [00:47:44]:
And those are called boomerang hires. And we’ve had several of those. I had one client who wanted to bring back their female tech staff that had left. So there was a lot of technical, gosh, expertise, if you would, and left the company. And I don’t know why they left. There was different reasons there, but they wanted to increase their, for diversity reasons, increase their female tech staff. So we reached out to them and brought some of them back. So it was pretty great.

Denise Chaffin [00:48:12]:
But again, the re engagement, the trust that we’ve established with these people when they leave. Something else that came up yesterday in a podcast was the fact that when we are, or actually it was two days ago in a different podcast, when we are allowing people to leave our organization or again during layoffs, are we doing Pulse or are we doing surveys, exit surveys, or any kind of pull surveys while they’re still there? I mean, how many companies are doing that? Everybody should be doing it. Every company should be doing a survey. When somebody comes in after like 30 days, 90 days to see how they, how the new employee likes to position, they should be survey them every six months or once a year at least. You know, how are things going? You know, tell us X, Y, Z, how you feel about your job, your management, the executive team, the company culture, all that type of thing. You need to be tracking that stuff. And then when somebody does leave, they need an exit interview. That way you know why they left.

Denise Chaffin [00:49:16]:
Because if you need to bring them back, then you’ve got all of that data there. So I’m hoping that more and more companies are going to do that because I think that it really helps with trust metrics. I think that also too less people will leave if they know that you’re checking in with them and not just taking information from them, but actionable information, things that you are going to change as a result of some of the feedback that they give you. So have you hired someone years after meeting them? Yes, probably. So that’s another thing that I think is very important. Oftentimes we’ll meet somebody, but maybe we don’t need that person yet in our company or in our organization. But what about two years from now, three years from now, you know, if we’ve stayed in contact with those people and we know, you know, where they’re at, you know, and what their timeline is for maybe making a move, you know, that’s so important. And again, I think the AI can help us.

Denise Chaffin [00:50:14]:
And I think this is where you Know, the ATS companies, you know, if they’re using the right. Using AI for the right tasks, I think the relationship memory system is going to be huge. So the future, you know, the best relationship stewards are going to win. They really are. I mean, hands down, as we are connecting with people and as we are developing relationships, and we’re not going to be perfect at it. Nobody is. We’re human. Right.

Denise Chaffin [00:50:44]:
But again, technology driven, human guided, that. I stick to that. So we don’t just fill roles. We steward careers and we steward relationships, not just careers. So I think that that is probably the important. The important message here. And I would love to go here and see some questions. Get off the phone.

Denise Chaffin [00:51:07]:
I. I love Sean Bell. Get off the phone. I need to check my email. That is good. And then C.J. misses the BlackBerry. Actually, I heard something interesting about the BlackBerry.

Denise Chaffin [00:51:20]:
So I don’t know who the founder of that company was, but when Apple first came out with the smartphone, the president of BlackBerry said, well, who wants to be watching movies on such a small device? Little did he know that it was going to take off. He should have been a little smarter and said, oh, yeah, maybe we should incorporate that into our cell phones. Right? I still have my BlackBerry. Bold. Cj, Brick breaker. Ftw. I don’t know what FTW means. Those are great.

Denise Chaffin [00:51:51]:
Any questions?

Kortney Harmon [00:51:53]:
We’ll leave it open. If anybody has any questions for Denise, I know we have Anna backstage. Anna, I’ll bring you on in a second. Give me a few. I love that. I just. I literally, as soon as you said dial up AOL Internet, like, I remember, I remember our first computer. Like, I literally was telling my kids that today or this week, my son was like, about the computer and how spoiled they are at 12.

Kortney Harmon [00:52:15]:
And I’m like, do you know the first computer was like, black with green writing? And he’s like, really? I’m like, yeah. You thought black and white movies were bad, bud. That was a whole nother world.

Denise Chaffin [00:52:26]:
Yeah, Those were the DOS computers. Right? Back then. Yeah.

Kortney Harmon [00:52:29]:
I remember playing Oregon Trail on those bad boys whenever I was in elementary school.

Denise Chaffin [00:52:35]:
Great. Oh, yeah. Or Word Perfect. Word Perfect was the first. Yeah, I know. I’m showing.

Kortney Harmon [00:52:42]:
And now look at the speed that we’re moving.

Denise Chaffin [00:52:44]:
Oh, I know. But I’m like, I was saying, though, I want to draw the parallels between them and now, you know, because they’re there. Definitely. There’s a lot of people. I hear a lot of fear all the time about AI, but, you know, and I think part of my mission here is to kind of, you know, relax that fear so people aren’t so worried about it. Because we can’t, you know, just like Dan Burr said yesterday, we can only look forward. You know, the future is here. The future is going to keep going.

Denise Chaffin [00:53:10]:
There’s nothing that we can do to stop it. So educating ourselves and making those comparisons, drawing those parallels between what happened 30 years ago and what’s happening now, I think will help to kind of quell some of the fear that people have around AI.

Kortney Harmon [00:53:24]:
Yeah, no, I agree. I love it. Denise, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your knowledge and your wisdom. If anybody has any questions for Denise, if you don’t put them here, feel free to connect with Denise on LinkedIn. Follow her podcast as well. So many wonderful speakers in this industry. Once again, Denise, thank you so very much for your.

Denise Chaffin [00:53:45]:
Thank you, Kortney. Well, thank you for having me on. I so appreciate it.

Kortney Harmon [00:53:52]:
That’s a wrap on this episode. If this one got you thinking, just wait until you see hear what’s coming next. We’re dropping a new session from the FDE Plus Q1 event every week. Each one a different speaker, a different topic, and a different angle on what really takes to build relationship driven revenue in this industry right now. Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss the next one. We’ll see you there.

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.