In brief: More recruiting tools cannot help us find the right person if we have not defined the work and the measure of success before searching. Leaders, HR and recruiters each see a different part of the problem. They need a shared brief that brings the work, people and team together. Analytics can support that process, but it cannot replace a conversation or the final decision made by a person.
A recruiter receives a hundred CVs and is asked to find the right person. But what should they compare those CVs against if the actual work has not yet been defined?
The business owner knows that results need to improve. The manager sees which work is not getting done. The HR leader sees workload, turnover and people related risks. The recruiter hears the candidate’s story and tries to understand whether the candidate’s expectations could meet the company’s.
They are working towards the same goal, but from different sides of the problem. When a manager says, “We urgently need a new person,” the recruiter often receives a job title, a long wish list and a deadline as the brief. They are then expected to make a precise decision using material that may not accurately describe either the work or the person.
This is not recruiter incompetence. It is a gap in how the work is divided.
Why can good people reach different conclusions?
For a business owner, the focus is on value for the customer, profit and the company’s survival. They ask: “What result are we missing, and what is it costing us?” Senior leaders must also allocate resources and decide who should be responsible for which work.
For an HR leader, the question is broader: how do we find, develop and retain people so the organisation can keep working after the next hire? A recruiter works directly between two sides. They need to reach people, build trust, distinguish genuine interest from a polite yes, and help make a choice within limited time.
These are not personality types or fixed worldviews. They are roles with different information, responsibilities and measures. Some recruiters think like entrepreneurs; some owners are exceptionally good at understanding people. Friction arises when one role assumes its knowledge is self evident to another.
An owner may assume HR understands the business bottleneck without having it explained. HR may assume the manager has already defined the work clearly. A recruiter may assume the requirements in the job ad are genuinely necessary. A candidate may assume the work described in the ad reflects their future working day. Everyone can move forward in good faith while none of these assumptions has been checked.
Recruiters are asked for precision without a point of comparison
A CV mostly describes the past, and even then selectively. A job ad describes the future, also selectively. One does not fully show a person’s capabilities, interests, working style or potential. The other does not show the real share of different tasks, workload, boundaries of responsibility, team interactions or whether all the work really belongs in one position.
A recruiter can often spot contradictions that no filter catches. They know how to ask the question that helps a candidate put a real preference into words for the first time. An HR leader knows the organisation’s history, how its leaders behave and how change affects people. These are their strengths.
But when information about the work is scattered across projects, a manager’s head, process documents, conversations and different software, we cannot expect one person to gather it all by hand, interpret it and compare it with hundreds of candidates. Usually there is no time, shared structure or agreement about how to interpret different kinds of data. So people inevitably use what is available: CVs, job ads, interviews, tests and professional intuition.
That is sensible work with the tools currently available. The question is why we have left so much invisible analysis on the shoulders of one overloaded person.
An ATS does necessary work. But it cannot decide what the work means.
An applicant tracking system, or ATS, helps bring applications together, track communication and stages, and prevent a person or a decision from getting lost in the process. Scheduling, document management, consent and a clear overview are genuinely useful when hiring volume grows. Tools that reduce other administrative work matter too.
The problem begins when organising the process is mistaken for understanding fit. A well managed database may contain hundreds of CVs, but if fit is measured only against keywords and a superficial job ad, it simply makes the application of flawed assumptions faster. AI can write a smoother job ad and rank candidates in seconds. It cannot fix an objective the company has not thought through.
This does not mean hiring speed is unimportant. When the work and selection criteria are clear, speed is a real advantage. When they are muddled, speed expands the reach of a decision before anyone notices the mistake.
What can make people hesitant to learn about a new approach?
A recruiter or HR leader who is cautious about a new assessment method may not be against technology. They may be asking the right questions: will it work for our roles? Can we explain its results to the person? Will candidates be treated fairly? Who is responsible if the system is wrong? Will a manager mistake a score for a decision? How much new work will implementation create for me?
There may also be a personal career risk: could the tool show that an earlier decision was incomplete? Will my experience still be trusted? Will I lose control but keep the responsibility? These questions should not be dismissed as weakness or attributed to all HR professionals. They are understandable when a tool affects people’s opportunities and someone’s professional judgement. LinkedIn’s recruiting report also lists data privacy, legal questions and uncertainty about using the tools among concerns related to AI adoption.
Company leaders should answer these questions as seriously as questions about price or return on investment. They should show what data is used, which parts are assumptions, who can correct the conclusions and who makes the final decision. They should start with one real role instead of asking people to believe a general promise.
Where can Sparkly help?
Sparkly’s idea is to give scattered knowledge a shared structure. First, describe the result the company needs, the activities that make up the work and the team in which it takes place. Then consider a person’s capabilities, preferences, development potential and fit with those specific tasks. A single typology cannot describe the whole picture; different perspectives need to be used together, with their limits understood.
That overview could help a recruiter ask better questions, help an HR leader notice unused strengths in the existing team, and help a manager decide whether a new hire is needed at all. Sometimes a candidate may be better suited to another role. Sometimes an existing employee could move into the vacant position. Sometimes tasks and responsibilities need to be redistributed before hiring.
This is Sparkly’s value proposition, and it needs to be checked against the real work of each company. An analytical profile is not the truth about a person. A fit score is not a hiring decision. Results need to be discussed with the person, checked against work related evidence and leave room for what the model does not know.
If a system helps gather relevant information and make it comparable, a recruiter does not have to spend their best energy guessing between incomplete documents. They can use it to build relationships, understand candidates and have difficult conversations. An HR leader can focus on people’s development, a fairer process and how the team works. A manager can finally see what their business goal actually requires of people.
That is where the shared ground appears: the manager brings the work and desired result, HR brings knowledge of people and the organisation, and the recruiter brings the candidates’ real stories. Sparkly helps bring these perspectives into one structure. None of these people has to do someone else’s job, but each can do their own with better information.
What do the statistics actually tell us?
Claims are often repeated that 74% of employers are dissatisfied with their employees and 87% of people are ready to change jobs. Those figures cannot be used in that form. The 74% comes from a 2017 US survey in which employers said they had made a bad hire. In coverage of a 2023 Estonian survey, 73% of employees were open to job offers; the 87% figure referred to those who rated their financial situation as poor. These are different groups and different questions. They do not prove that hiring quality has failed to improve over the decades.
The question still remains. If we keep getting better at measuring hiring speed, but cannot confidently say which person will do well in which work and team, what are we actually optimising?
A recruiter does not need one more instruction to “be more strategic”. They need a better brief about the work. An HR leader does not need another spreadsheet to fill in alone. They need a shared structure where managers can contribute their knowledge and people can explore their opportunities. A business owner does not just need a position filled faster. They need the right work to be done by the right people.
Perhaps what holds us back is not resistance to new technology. Perhaps we are used to asking people for precise decisions in situations where we have not given them precise information. It is time to do that work together.
If you want to see what work and capabilities may have gone unnoticed in your company, talk with Sparkly about your company’s specific situation.