Author: Alyana

The future of recruitment: Trends to watch by job seekers

The hiring market a senior professional will encounter over the next three years looks materially different from the one that existed before 2020. Processes are longer but more transparent, screening is more heavily automated at the top of the funnel and more human at the bottom, and employers are far more explicit about the skills they are buying. Understanding these shifts is the difference between running a frustrating search and running an efficient one.

Skills-based hiring is displacing pedigree

A growing proportion of employers have removed degree requirements from senior specifications and replaced them with demonstrable capability. This is genuinely good news for experienced professionals, but it changes what a CV needs to do. A chronological history of employers is no longer sufficient; the document has to make your capabilities legible in the first third of the first page. Lead with what you can do and what it produced, and let the employment history support it rather than carry it.

AI screens the funnel, humans decide the outcome

Most large employers now use some form of automated parsing before a human reads an application. The practical consequence is that clarity beats creativity in written materials: conventional section headings, the actual vocabulary of the job specification, and plain formatting all improve the likelihood of reaching a person. Once you reach that person, the reverse applies — final-stage decisions are more human and more values-driven than they were five years ago, because employers have learned how expensive a cultural mis-hire is.

Hybrid work has become a negotiated term, not a policy

The blanket remote-versus-office debate has largely resolved into role-by-role negotiation. For candidates this is leverage, but only if handled at the right moment. Raising location flexibility in a first conversation reads as a constraint; raising it once the employer has decided they want you reads as a detail to be solved. Sequence matters.

Internal mobility is absorbing more senior roles

Under cost pressure, employers increasingly fill senior positions internally and go to market only for genuinely scarce capability. Two implications follow. First, the externally advertised market understates real activity, so passive visibility matters more than active applying. Second, if you are currently employed, the fastest route to a bigger role may be a lateral internal move that adds a missing capability to your profile.

Employer due diligence now runs in both directions

Senior candidates research prospective employers with a rigour that would have seemed adversarial a decade ago, examining leadership turnover, funding position, employee sentiment and regulatory history. Employers have adjusted and now expect informed questions. Arriving without them is read as low engagement.

What to do about all of this

Concretely: rewrite your CV around capabilities and outcomes rather than duties; maintain a professional profile that is discoverable when you are not looking; build genuine relationships with two or three specialist recruiters in your sector rather than broadcasting to twenty; and prepare to be assessed on judgement rather than knowledge.

Erdobar works with professionals across technology, finance, engineering, healthcare and public affairs in more than forty countries, and we are candid about fit even when the answer is that a role is wrong for you. If you would value an informed conversation about where your profile sits in the current market, explore our career counselling service.

20 November 2024
How recruitment agencies can help startups build teams

Early-stage companies face a hiring problem that is structurally different from the one large employers face. A corporate hiring manager filling a role is adding capacity to a system that already works. A founder making their eighth hire is defining what the company becomes. The cost of a poor decision is not a wasted salary; it is a year of cultural drift and, frequently, the departure of good people who joined before the mistake.

Yet startups are also the least equipped to hire well. There is rarely a dedicated talent function, the employer brand is unknown outside a narrow circle, compensation cannot compete on cash, and the founders doing the hiring are the same people who must also build the product and raise the next round.

Where a specialist partner genuinely adds value

Turning an ambition into a specification. The most common failure in early-stage hiring is an unwritten role. Founders describe the person they imagine rather than the outcomes they need, and the search drifts. A good recruitment partner starts by converting the ambition into a specification: the three outcomes this hire owns in their first year, the capabilities that are genuinely non-negotiable, and the ones that are preferences in disguise. That conversation alone often changes the shape of the role.

Reaching people who are not looking. The candidates who can build a function from nothing are almost never on job boards; they are employed, well-regarded and not actively searching. Reaching them requires a warm route, a credible articulation of the opportunity and the patience to have a conversation that does not convert for six months. This is the part founders cannot easily do at volume alongside running a company.

Selling the opportunity honestly. Startups win senior talent on scope, equity and proximity to real decisions, not on salary. Presenting that trade-off credibly — including the risks — attracts people who are genuinely suited to the environment and filters out those who will be unhappy within a quarter. Overselling is the single most expensive thing an early-stage employer can do.

Compensation intelligence. Founders routinely over- or under-offer because they lack reliable benchmarks for their stage, sector and geography, particularly when hiring across borders. Getting the equity-to-cash balance right at offer stage prevents the corrosive internal inequities that surface eighteen months later.

Speed with structure. Early-stage companies must move quickly, but speed without structure produces inconsistent decisions. A defined process — consistent interview stages, agreed scoring criteria, a single decision-maker — lets a startup move faster than a corporate while making better decisions than one.

Choosing a partner that fits the stage

Not every agency suits early-stage work. Ask directly whether the firm has built comparable teams at comparable stage, whether you will work with the person who pitched to you, how they handle a placement that does not work out, and whether their fee model matches your funding rhythm. Contingency search suits volume; retained or fixed-fee search suits appointments where the specification is difficult and the cost of error is high.

Erdobar supports founders with cost-effective, fixed-fee hiring designed for teams that need to scale quickly without committing to a permanent internal talent function. We are transparent about pricing, we work to an agreed specification, and we will tell you when we think a role is wrong before we take it on.

Talk to us about your hiring plan and we will tell you honestly what it will take.

20 November 2024
Your perfect guide to navigate salary negotiations

Salary negotiation is the highest-return twenty minutes in most professional careers, and it is also where capable people most reliably underperform. The reason is rarely a lack of technique. It is that negotiation feels like a threat to a relationship that has just started going well, so candidates accept the first number to avoid the discomfort.

It is worth being precise about the cost of that discomfort. A senior professional who accepts an offer five per cent below what was available, and whose subsequent rises are calculated as percentages of that base, will typically forgo a six-figure sum over a career. Employers know this. Almost none of them withdraw an offer because a candidate negotiated professionally.

Establish the range before you need it

Negotiating without data is guessing. Before any conversation about money, establish the realistic range for the role in that sector, at that company size, in that location, for someone with your specific evidence. Use published salary surveys, sector-specific benchmarks and, most usefully, a specialist recruiter who places these roles and knows what is actually being paid rather than advertised. Arrive with a range you can justify and a walk-away number you have decided in advance and in writing.

Let the employer anchor, then respond with evidence

Where you can do so gracefully, allow the employer to state a range first. If pressed for expectations before you have information, a composed deferral works: that you are focused on establishing mutual fit and would welcome the range budgeted for the role. When you do state a number, state the top of your justified range rather than the middle, and immediately attach it to evidence — the scope you are taking on, comparable market data, and the outcomes you have delivered previously.

Negotiate the whole package

Base salary is the most visible term and often the least flexible, particularly where an employer maintains internal pay bands. Bonus structure, equity, pension contribution, notice period, holiday entitlement, professional development budget, title, reporting line and location flexibility are frequently more movable and can be worth more in combination. If base salary is genuinely capped, a documented six-month review against agreed objectives is a reasonable and commonly accepted alternative.

Language that keeps the relationship intact

Frame the conversation as joint problem-solving rather than positional bargaining. “I am genuinely enthusiastic about this role and want to make it work. Based on the scope we have discussed and what I am seeing in the market, I was expecting something closer to X — how much flexibility is there?” This is collaborative, specific and easy for a hiring manager to take to their finance partner.

Two disciplines matter more than any phrasing. Never negotiate in the moment on a phone call — thank them warmly, ask for the offer in writing and request a defined period to consider it. And never invent a competing offer; it is easily detected, it destroys trust and it occasionally ends the process.

Close it cleanly

Once you reach agreement, confirm every term in writing before resigning anything, including start date, reporting line, bonus mechanics and any review commitment. Then close warmly. The person on the other side of that negotiation is about to become your manager, and a negotiation conducted with evidence and good humour tends to start that relationship well rather than badly.

Erdobar advises candidates on offer strategy as a standard part of every search we run, including realistic benchmarking for the specific role and market. Learn more about our career counselling support.

20 November 2024
Get recruiter’s insider tips for crafting the perfect resume

A recruiter filling a senior role will typically review several hundred applications. The first pass on each one takes a matter of seconds, and it is not a careful reading — it is a search for three things: what this person does, at what level, and whether there is evidence they do it well. If those three things are not immediately locatable, the application is set aside regardless of the quality of the underlying career.

What follows is what actually determines that outcome, from the perspective of the people making the decision.

The top third of page one decides everything

Most CVs waste their most valuable space on a generic profile paragraph. Replace it with four or five lines that state your discipline, your level, your sector context and two quantified achievements. A reader should be able to finish that block and know whether to continue. Everything below it exists to substantiate it.

Write outcomes, not duties

This is the single largest differentiator between CVs that progress and CVs that do not. “Responsible for managing the regional sales team” describes an assignment. “Led a team of fourteen across three markets, growing regional revenue from €8m to €13m in two years while reducing attrition from 24% to 9%” describes a professional. Where you cannot obtain exact figures, an honest approximation with context is far better than a vague duty. Aim for two or three quantified outcomes per substantial role.

Use the employer’s vocabulary

Automated parsing is a reality at most large employers, and it matches on terminology. If the specification says “talent acquisition” and your CV says “recruitment”, include both. This is not keyword stuffing, which is transparent and counterproductive; it is describing your experience in the language of the reader. Tailoring the top third and the skills section to each application takes fifteen minutes and changes response rates substantially.

Length, format and the things that quietly cause rejection

Two pages is correct for the large majority of senior professionals; three is defensible for academic, legal or research careers with publication records. Use a single clean typeface, conventional section headings, no columns, no tables, no graphics, no photograph unless local convention requires one, and submit as PDF unless another format is requested. Elaborate design fails parsers and signals unfamiliarity with the process.

Explain gaps briefly and without apology — an unexplained two-year absence attracts far more suspicion than a one-line note about caring responsibilities, study or a deliberate break. Keep early-career roles to a single line each. Remove the objective statement, the marital status, the date of birth, the full home address and the phrase “references available on request”. Proofread twice and have someone else read it once, because a typo in the first three lines of a senior CV does real damage.

Make the digital version match

Recruiters will look at your professional profile before they contact you, and inconsistency between the two documents raises questions you do not want raised. Align dates and titles exactly, and ensure the profile headline states what you do rather than where you work.

A final test

Hand your CV to someone outside your field and give them thirty seconds. Then ask what you do, how senior you are and what you are good at. If they can answer all three, the document works. If they hesitate on any of them, the problem is structural rather than cosmetic.

Erdobar reviews CVs as part of our career counselling service and will tell you candidly how yours reads to a hiring panel. Find out more.

19 November 2024
Attracting the top talent: Strategies for hiring executives

Executive hiring differs from all other recruitment in one decisive respect: the people you most want are not available. They are performing well in roles they are not unhappy in, they are not reading job advertisements, and they will not respond to a generic approach. Any executive hiring strategy that depends on candidates coming to you is a strategy for appointing the people who happen to be looking, which is a materially different population from the people who are best.

The cost of getting this wrong is disproportionate. A failed senior appointment carries not only recruitment and severance costs but twelve to eighteen months of strategic drift, the disengagement of a leadership team that watched it happen, and often the loss of good people who reported to the wrong hire.

Define the mandate before you define the person

Most executive searches begin with a specification describing an idealised biography — sector background, company size, years of experience — and never articulate what the appointment must actually achieve. Invert this. Agree, in writing and among all decision-makers, the three outcomes this executive owns in their first eighteen months and the conditions they will face while delivering them. A turnaround mandate and a scale-up mandate require genuinely different people, and boards that skip this step frequently discover the disagreement at final stage, after months of work.

Approach passive candidates with a proposition, not a vacancy

Senior people respond to a compelling problem, not an opening. The approach that works describes the strategic challenge, the scope of authority, the quality of the team and board, and the reason this appointment matters now. It respects their time and expects nothing on first contact. This is slow, relationship-led work, and it is the substance of retained search.

Protect confidentiality deliberately

Where an incumbent is still in post, or where the appointment signals a strategic shift to competitors, discretion is a commercial requirement rather than a courtesy. This means controlled information release, named client identity disclosed only at advanced stages, and secure candidate data handling under GDPR. Leaks at executive level damage share price, customer confidence and internal stability.

Assess judgement rather than knowledge

By the time a candidate reaches an executive shortlist, technical competence is largely established. What remains genuinely uncertain is judgement under pressure, ability to build followership and integrity when nobody is watching. Assessing these requires structured behavioural interviewing against agreed criteria, realistic scenario work drawn from the actual challenges of the role, psychometric input used as one signal among several, and referencing that goes beyond nominated referees to people who have worked below and alongside the candidate. Panels that rely on chemistry consistently appoint people who interview well.

Move at the speed of the market

Executive processes fail as often through delay as through poor assessment. Strong candidates who are courted over five months by an indecisive board withdraw, and they tell their networks why. Agree the process, the panel, the dates and the decision rights before the search opens, and hold to them.

Treat onboarding as part of the appointment

The appointment is not complete at signature. Executives who fail usually fail in the first six months, through unclear mandate, unresolved inherited conflict or an absent stakeholder map. A structured first hundred days, an explicit statement of authority and a named internal sponsor materially improve retention. Erdobar builds onboarding support into every retained search for exactly this reason.

Widen the pool deliberately

Roughly a fifth of leadership roles are held by candidates from under-represented groups, and the primary mechanism is not overt bias but narrow sourcing from familiar networks. Structured criteria applied consistently, blind initial screening and deliberate outreach beyond existing networks expand the pool without lowering the bar — and they demonstrably improve the quality of shortlists.

Erdobar runs confidential retained executive search for C-suite and senior leadership appointments, combining AI-assisted mapping of passive candidates with rigorous human assessment. Clients typically see hiring cycles shorten by around thirty per cent against their previous experience. Explore our executive search practice or arrange a confidential conversation.

19 November 2024
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16 March 2024