The Marketplace Myth in Recruiting
Everyone wants to build a marketplace these days. It’s the siren song of the startup world: “Just connect buyers and sellers, take a cut, and watch the money roll in.” We tried it in recruiting. We learned some expensive lessons.
Here’s the thing about marketplaces in recruiting: they’re like trying to build a garden center when what most clients really want is a personal gardener. Sure, the selection might be broader, but the magic isn’t in the variety – it’s in knowing exactly which plant will thrive in your specific corner of the yard.
We started like many others, charging placement fees and building software to scale. The dream was beautiful: a self-serving platform where employers and candidates would find their perfect match, with us taking a modest cut for maintaining the ecosystem. Reality had other plans.
What we discovered is that recruiting isn’t just about access to candidates – it’s about the human work of shaping expectations, challenging assumptions, and building trust. You can’t automate the moment when a recruiter needs to tell a client their salary expectations are unrealistic, or when a candidate needs reassurance about a career-changing move.
This becomes even more critical in our AI-saturated world. As automation handles more of the routine tasks, the real value comes from the things that don’t scale easily: genuine relationships, industry insight, and the ability to read between the lines of what clients and candidates are saying.
The successful recruiters I see today aren’t winning because they have the biggest database or the fanciest AI tools. They’re winning because they’re investing in what I call “relationship compound interest” – consistent presence, micro-interactions, and genuine community building that pays off over years, not quarters.
Here’s what works in recruiting: Build real relationships. Challenge assumptions. Think in decades, not days. Focus on the human work that no marketplace can replicate. And most importantly, remember that sometimes the old way of doing things isn’t outdated – it’s just right.
The irony? The more our industry pushes toward automation and scale, the more valuable these human elements become. Maybe that’s the real marketplace we should be building: one of trust, relationships, and genuine human connection.