What If There Was No Recruiting Team?
Have we built a hiring machine to hide the fact that no one knows how to hire?
Imagine this: You have a critical role to fill. The team is underwater. The work is stacking up. But this time, there’s no recruiter.
No one to run the intake. No one to post the job. No one to scan resumes, run pre-screens, or coordinate interviews. No one to chase feedback. No one to nudge you toward a decision. Just you, and the open role.
Still feel good about your hiring instincts?
Because here’s the secret: most of what we think of as a "recruiting process" is really a protective layer for underdeveloped leadership. It's scaffolding for people who were never taught how to hire well. It's a buffer between those making the decision and the accountability that should come with it.
If the recruiting team vanished tomorrow, most hiring managers wouldn’t be exposed for their bad taste. They’d be exposed for having no taste. No clarity on what the role really requires. No ability to define excellence. No idea how to separate performance from polish.
Recruiting was never supposed to make the decision for you. But we’ve slowly let it become exactly that. Because it's easier to blame a pipeline than to own a poor hire.
We even measure recruiting by metrics they can’t control: time to fill, and whether the person stays more than six months. But they don’t pick the person. The hiring manager does.
What if recruiting didn’t exist?
You’d have to write your own job descriptions—ones that actually reflect the work. You’d have to know what "good" looks like. You’d have to be in every interview. You’d have to explain your choices. You’d have to answer for the outcome.
And maybe that’s the whole point.
We’ve built entire layers of infrastructure to give the illusion of precision. But when the hire doesn’t work out, recruiting gets the side-eye while the hiring manager quietly reopens the req.
No.
If there was no recruiting team, we’d stop pretending the problem is the pipeline. And we’d start asking why the people making the call aren’t the ones being held accountable when it goes wrong.
This isn’t a takedown of TA. It’s the opposite.
It’s a wake-up call for everyone who treats hiring like a task to delegate.
Because if you lead people, hiring is the job. And the recruiting team is there to help you do it better. Not to do it for you.
If you have an open req right now and you're waiting for recruiting to deliver screened candidates, stop waiting. Get involved. Right now.
Read the resumes yourself. Yes, all of them. Write down what you’re actually hiring for—not the bullet points from last year’s job post, but what success looks like in the next 90 days. Identify the make-or-break behaviors. The gaps on your team. The risks you’re willing to take—and the ones you’re not.
Join the first screens. Ask real questions. Not trivia. Not “what’s your biggest weakness?” Ask about moments. Ask for decisions. Ask them to walk you through the last time they solved a problem like the one you’re hiring them to solve.
Create a panel that complements your blind spots. If you don’t know what great looks like in a certain skill set, bring in someone who does. Don’t fake it. Don’t bluff your way through evaluation. Own your gaps—and design around them.
Treat hiring like onboarding. It doesn’t start with the offer letter. It starts with the signal you send in every conversation. Be honest. Be specific. Be clear about what kind of culture they’re stepping into—and what kind of culture you expect them to help build.
And above all, take ownership.
The greatest skill I ever learned was how to interview. Years of training my gut and instincts. Of asking the right questions for the role. Of taking it upon myself to find out what certain skills "sound like" when I didn’t already know them. In the past decade, I have reviewed all my own resumes. Selected all the people I wanted to interview. Created my own interview panel based on the gaps I needed to fill between my knowledge of the role and my ability to identify the skills.
I didn’t need someone else’s opinion on "cultural fit"—I could assess that because I was part of the culture. And because I was clear about the culture on my teams. It’s empowering to own that selection from start to finish. And when I made mistakes—when someone wasn’t right for the role, or the team, or the moment—I owned that too. From tip to toe.
That’s what it means to lead. Not to outsource judgment. But to hone it.