My personal reflections on a profession I've loved, the changes I've witnessed, and why I fear we may be losing the very things that made recruitment great.

I've spent 35 years in recruitment. For 25 of those years, I've had the enormous pleasure of building The Simmance Partnership into a recognised name in FMCG executive recruitment.

And I really do mean pleasure.

I've loved the people, the personalities, the challenges, the negotiations, the disappointments, the successes and, perhaps more than anything, the relationships.

I've met extraordinary people who have trusted me with important decisions about their businesses, their careers and sometimes their futures. Some have become lifelong friends.

I've watched careers flourish, businesses transform and individuals achieve things they might never have imagined possible. There's something immensely satisfying about knowing you've played a part in making that happen.

It's a wonderful profession.

Or at least, it certainly can be.

But as I reflect on the past quarter of a century, I find myself increasingly troubled by what recruitment is becoming.

We have more technology at our fingertips than ever before. We can identify thousands of potential candidates in seconds, communicate with hundreds at the press of a button and increasingly allow artificial intelligence to undertake work that once required a skilled consultant.

Impressive? Absolutely.

Progress? I'm not so sure.

Because somewhere in this relentless pursuit of efficiency, productivity, automation and lower costs, I fear we're losing something far more valuable.

The human touch.

And without that, what exactly is recruitment?

When recruitment was about knowing people

When I started, you couldn't hide behind a computer screen or rely on an algorithm to tell you who might be suitable for a job.

You had to know your market. Understand the businesses you represented, their cultures, competitors, personalities and challenges.

And you had to know people. Really know them.

That meant conversations. Lots of them.

Picking up the telephone, meeting people, listening, asking questions and sometimes discovering things that had absolutely nothing to do with the vacancy you were trying to fill.

But those conversations mattered.

They revealed ambition, motivation, capability and character. They taught you that someone who appeared entirely unsuitable on paper might be precisely the person a business needed.

I've always believed the best recruiters possess an almost insatiable curiosity about people. They want to understand what makes somebody tick, what excites them, what frustrates them and what they might be capable of achieving.

You cannot learn all of that from a LinkedIn profile.

And you certainly cannot reduce it to a handful of keywords.

The best recruiters also need the confidence to have difficult conversations. To challenge unrealistic expectations, question a candidate's career decision or disagree with a hiring manager's judgement.

I've never been particularly interested in telling people what they want to hear. I've always preferred telling them what I genuinely believe they need to know.

That hasn't always made me popular.

But I'd rather have a reputation for being candid than one for being agreeable.

Twenty-five years of change. Not all of it for the better.

It would be ridiculous to suggest recruitment was somehow perfect 25 years ago.

It wasn't.

There were poor recruiters then, just as there are excellent recruiters today. And technology has unquestionably made parts of our job easier.

The internet transformed advertising and communication. Job boards made vacancies more accessible, email accelerated conversations and searchable databases revolutionised information management.

Then came LinkedIn.

Suddenly, the professional world became visible in a way that would have been unimaginable when I started. Names, career histories, job titles and professional connections were available to almost anyone prepared to look.

For specialist recruiters, it was an extraordinary resource.

But it also fundamentally changed the economics of recruitment.

When everyone can find the same people, what exactly distinguishes one recruiter from another?

Access to people has increasingly been mistaken for an understanding of people.

They are two very different things.

Identifying 50 potential candidates in ten minutes doesn't mean you can judge which of them might succeed in a particular business, let alone persuade an exceptional individual to consider an opportunity they weren't looking for.

And yet I increasingly see recruitment businesses promoting the sophistication of their technology rather than the quality of their consultants.

It makes me wonder whether we've forgotten what we're actually being paid to do.

The events that tested us

Technology hasn't been the only force reshaping recruitment.

The financial crisis of 2008 was brutal. Businesses stopped hiring, budgets disappeared and recruitment companies failed. Those who survived learned valuable lessons about resilience, commercial discipline and genuine client relationships.

Brexit brought fresh challenges, particularly for food manufacturing and industries reliant on international labour.

Then came COVID.

Almost overnight, video interviews became normal, remote working commonplace and businesses had to reconsider how they attracted and retained talent.

Some changes were genuinely beneficial. I have no desire to see a candidate travel hundreds of miles for an introductory conversation that could perfectly well happen over video.

But convenience isn't always a substitute for connection.

There's a great deal you learn about someone when you meet them face to face. Their curiosity, enthusiasm, ability to listen, the questions they ask and the impression they leave.

Not everything that matters can be measured or recorded.

More recently, inflation, rising costs and economic uncertainty have placed enormous pressure on recruitment budgets.

I understand those pressures. I run a business myself.

What troubles me is the growing tendency to regard recruitment as little more than a cost to be reduced.

When did recruitment become a race to the bottom?

Over the years, I've watched recruitment fees come under increasing pressure.

Procurement departments, preferred supplier arrangements, internal talent acquisition teams and an ever-growing number of recruitment businesses have all played their part.

I'm certainly not suggesting recruiters have some divine right to charge whatever they please.

We have to earn our fees. Every single time.

But I find it extraordinary that businesses will spend months debating investments in machinery, technology or product development, yet seek to drive down the cost of recruiting the very individual responsible for delivering their success.

Where is the logic in that?

The right appointment can transform a business. The wrong one can be enormously expensive, financially and culturally.

And yet recruitment fees are sometimes negotiated as though we're buying stationery.

The cost of recruitment and the value of recruitment are not the same thing.

Perhaps three experiences from my own career illustrate why I feel so strongly.

Three experiences that remind me what great recruitment really looks like

1. A business turnaround where failure wasn't an option

Some years ago, a US private equity house acquired a distressed branded business operating across the UK and America.

The challenge was formidable. The business needed rebuilding, its performance transformed and its leadership strengthened.

I found myself working alongside a legendary FMCG business leader, someone with an extraordinary instinct for identifying and developing exceptional people.

Our task was to create the people plan capable of delivering an ambitious turnaround.

We didn't start with algorithms, automated assessments or endless competency matrices.

We started with knowledge, instinct, experience and an uncompromising determination to recruit the best of the best.

We knew the calibre of people required. We understood the commercial challenge and recognised the personalities capable of meeting it.

There were heated debates, difficult negotiations and the occasional tussle over salaries. We challenged one another, disagreed and pushed hard to secure the individuals we believed would make the difference.

Nobody was interested in quibbling over recruitment fees.

The stakes were considerably higher.

Failure simply wasn't an option.

Over four years, the business delivered double-digit growth and tripled its profits. It was subsequently sold for $240 million.

Was recruitment solely responsible? Of course not. Great business transformations require exceptional leadership, strategy, investment and execution.

But the right people were fundamental to what was achieved.

And identifying, attracting and securing them required something rather more sophisticated than a database search.

It required judgement.

2. Fifteen years, three generations and a business transformed

Another relationship has been with a remarkable third-generation family business, established more than a century ago.

Over more than 15 years, I've had the privilege of helping it build and strengthen its sales and marketing leadership.

This was never simply about filling vacancies.

It was about understanding the family, their values, their ambitions and the particular qualities that would enable an outsider to succeed within a business with such a strong heritage.

Together, we shaped roles, considered personalities and identified people who could contribute something genuinely valuable.

Some candidates looked obvious on paper. Others required a little more imagination.

The real skill was recognising the difference between good and exceptional, understanding what both parties genuinely wanted and creating the circumstances in which they wanted each other.

Over that period, the business grew from approximately £40 million to £120 million in revenue.

Many of the individuals we recruited remain with the business today, several having progressed into more senior positions.

For me, that's a far more meaningful measure of recruitment success than the number of vacancies filled.

It's also a wonderful example of what happens when professional relationships evolve into genuine friendships built on mutual trust.

No clever technology created that relationship.

People did.

3. "Just bring me scarily talented people"

Perhaps my favourite example is also one of the simplest.

I met a Chief People Officer for the first time. He was responsible for raising talent standards across a billion-pound FMCG business, home to several major household brands.

It was a substantial challenge, with considerable commercial consequences.

Naturally, I expected a detailed briefing. Perhaps a series of job descriptions, carefully constructed selection criteria, competency frameworks or some elaborate assessment process.

Instead, he gave me just one instruction.

"I want you to introduce me to scarily talented people."

That was it.

No job description. No prescriptive selection criteria. No technology-driven assessment.

Just an expectation that I would know what exceptional talent looked like, where to find it and how to persuade those individuals to engage.

I loved it.

Because that's precisely where an experienced specialist recruiter should come into their own.

Who are these people? What makes them extraordinary? Where are they now? What have they achieved? What could they become? And, perhaps most importantly, what would persuade them to consider something different?

Those aren't questions answered by simply pressing a button.

They're answered through years of industry knowledge, relationships, intuition, curiosity and an ability to win hearts and minds.

It was a brief founded entirely on trust in professional judgement.

And, frankly, I can't think of a better description of what truly great executive recruitment ought to be.

Artificial intelligence: extraordinary technology, but at what cost?

Which brings me to AI.

I find the technology fascinating. Indeed, I've used it to help research and develop this very reflection.

Its capabilities are extraordinary. It can research markets, identify potential candidates, summarise information, draft communications and remove much of the administration that has traditionally consumed recruiters' time.

Used intelligently, it could give experienced consultants more opportunity to do what they do best.

I'd welcome that wholeheartedly.

But I worry we're heading in a rather different direction.

We're at risk of creating a generation of technology-led recruitment operators who are highly proficient at using systems but have little genuine understanding of the industries they recruit for or the people whose careers they're influencing.

People who can generate a shortlist but struggle to hold a meaningful commercial conversation with a senior FMCG executive.

People who can send hundreds of automated approaches but cannot explain why a particular opportunity might genuinely appeal to an individual.

And businesses measuring success through activity, response rates and speed rather than the quality and longevity of their appointments.

I know that sounds harsh.

It's intended to be challenging.

Because my greatest concern isn't that AI will replace recruiters.

It's that we'll replace good recruiters with efficient operators and mistake the resulting reduction in cost for progress.

The genuinely exceptional consultant could become increasingly undervalued, not because they're less effective, but because their contribution is harder to quantify on a spreadsheet.

Technology should be a tool in the hands of a skilled professional, not a substitute for the professional themselves.

And what about the candidate?

This is perhaps the saddest part of all.

Behind every CV is a person.

Someone with ambitions, responsibilities, concerns, insecurities and hopes for their future.

Changing jobs, particularly at a senior level, can be one of the most significant decisions somebody makes. It affects families, financial security, confidence and careers.

Surely that deserves more than an automated message?

Yet we now have recruitment processes in which candidates can be assessed, rejected and communicated with without ever having a meaningful conversation with another human being.

I find that deeply disappointing.

I've always believed a recruiter has a responsibility to the candidate as well as the client.

Sometimes the most valuable advice you can give someone is not to take a job.

There's no fee in that.

But there is integrity.

And integrity has a habit of building relationships that last for decades.

What I fear we are about to lose

I don't believe artificial intelligence is the greatest threat to recruitment.

The real danger lies in confusing technological capability with professional expertise.

In believing that access to information is equivalent to understanding, that activity represents achievement and that faster and cheaper automatically means better.

Clients have a responsibility here too.

If you genuinely want exceptional people, you must be prepared to recognise the expertise required to identify and attract them.

You cannot continually demand a premium service while treating its cost as something to be driven to the lowest possible level.

At some point, something has to give.

And my fear is that it will be quality.

The irony is that the very qualities we're at risk of undervaluing are the ones that take longest to develop.

You cannot manufacture 35 years of experience overnight.

You cannot automate trust.

And you cannot simply buy a reputation.

You have to earn it.

Would I do it all again?

Without hesitation.

Thirty-five years in recruitment has given me an immensely rewarding professional life.

I've worked with wonderful people, built friendships, shared successes and enjoyed the privilege of being trusted with some enormously important decisions.

And for the past 25 years, The Simmance Partnership has been something I'm incredibly proud of.

Not simply because of the business we've built, but because of the relationships that have endured and the people whose careers and businesses we've helped shape.

I've never believed that a good recruiter should be measured by how agreeable they are.

They should be measured by the quality of their judgement, the integrity of their advice and the difference they make.

If there's one thing I'd like The Simmance Partnership to be remembered for, it's that.

Not how many CVs we sent.

Not how quickly we filled vacancies.

And certainly not how cheaply we could do the job.

I'd much rather be remembered for the people we recognised, the opportunities we created, the businesses we helped build and the relationships that survived long after the fees were paid.

I'm not ready to give up on this industry.

Far from it.

But I care enough about it to be worried.

Perhaps my views are old-fashioned. Perhaps some will consider them provocative, even uncomfortable.

That's fine by me.

I've spent 35 years earning the right to have an opinion. I haven't always been right, and I certainly haven't always been popular.

But I've never been particularly interested in following the crowd simply because everyone else is heading in the same direction.

So I'll finish with one question for the profession I've spent most of my working life enjoying.

Are we using technology to make recruitment better, or are we simply using it to make recruitment cheaper?

Because those are two very different ambitions.

And if we lose sight of that distinction, we risk losing the very thing that made recruitment such a wonderful profession in the first place.

People.

The Simmance Partnership — 25 years in FMCG executive recruitment, 2001–2026.

35 years of experience. A lifetime of relationships. And still passionate about getting it right.

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