Recruitment is no longer a structured formal introduction. Those one-sided days are gone. Now, recruiting is following the ways of dating apps. Or online shopping. Or even a Zepto delivery placed in a moment of urgency. Or, more accurately, a blend of all these consumer behaviours across categories.
Today’s candidates are not the wide-eyed hopefuls of yesteryear. They are informed and opinionated, and their minds are already half made up. And this shift in behaviour has pushed recruitment advertising to borrow heavily from consumer advertising.
Take dating apps. If you don’t immediately hook someone with a a certain something that makes the other person want to swipe right, you’re out of the running. Recruitment now works the same way. Candidates scroll through companies the way they scroll through profiles. If they aren’t feeling your tone, energy and authenticity in the first few seconds, they move on.
The ‘Tell me about yourself’ phase starts from social media, career pages, employee posts, and in the small cultural signals organisations put out without realising they’re being judged.
Let’s take the online shopping example now. No one buys on descriptions alone anymore. We go through reviews, make comparisons, check credibility. We want proof that what is being promised is going to be delivered. That’s what today’s candidates are doing. They examine your employer value proposition the way consumers examine brand positioning. They want to know what you stand for, and why they should choose you .“We’re a great place to work” is just background noise. Positioning, clarity and consistency are what matter.
Then, there’s quick commerce. We now live in a world where groceries arrive in 10 minutes. Now, candidates aren’t going to wait to hear from you. If they don’t get speed, transparency, and communication, they’ll simply move on. Every touchpoint in the candidate journey — discovery, interaction, interview experience, follow-ups — needs to be consciously designed.
Just as brands map customer journeys, organisations must track candidate journeys and put forward the right communication at the right moment to avoid drop-offs. This is also why recruitment advertising today looks nothing like traditional hiring campaigns. The most effective hooks are employee-led reels, informal videos, humour, and familiar digital formats borrowed from consumer culture.
And then there’s the AI. Recruitment today sits at a crossroads. Candidates appreciate the smoother scheduling and quicker responses AI has enabled. But, while they don’t want to wait weeks to hear back from you, at the same time they don’t want to feel like they’re being interviewed by a chatbot pretending to be human. Most successful recruitment processes will need to choreograph both — AI and humans.
Disclaimer: The views expressed are the author’s own and do not reflect the official policy or position of Financial Express.