AI Broke Recruiting + HR w/o BS + Performance Pays

HIRE

AI Broke Recruiting.

Candidates are drowning in spam. Companies are getting AI-polished resumes and real-time coached virtual candidates. Job platforms are charging unethical amounts for access to a candidate pool that's harder to trust than it's ever been. Reality has shifted. Most companies haven't.

How to Counter:

• Spray and pray is not a strategy: A specific, human note explaining why you're reaching out to a candidate gets responses. Generic messages get deleted. We donated to that mistake early on.
• Move fast or lose them: Response times in hours not days. How you run the process tells candidates everything about what working there will feel like.
• Vibes are not a hiring strategy: Five criteria. Same scale. Every candidate. Gut feelings have a terrible track record.
• Anyone can talk. Few can deliver: Ask for results, impact, failures, and what they learned. Vague answers are your answer.
• Test before you commit: Working interviews separate real candidates from polished ones. Confident candidates welcome them. The ones who push back tell you something.
• Virtual is a performance: Candidates are being coached real-time through tools on virtual calls. Eventually you need to sit across a table. On screen and in person are two very different things.

Stop evaluating how well someone or their AI prepared. Start evaluating how well they perform.

LEAD

HR w/o the BS

Bad HR is worse than no HR. Most leaders figure this out after the fact. After the handbook nobody uses. After the investigation that made things worse. After the turnover that HR couldn't explain but somehow wasn't their fault.

Most small businesses end up with someone in HR who thrives on drama, builds processes nobody asked for, and measures their value by how busy they look. Job security via complexity. It's a real thing and it's expensive.

Signs Your HR Is Actually the Problem:

• Complexity over clarity: Handbooks that take six months. SOPs nobody can find. Five-step processes for five-minute problems.
• Every issue becomes a formal process: Not every problem needs a procedure. That's bureaucracy dressed up as support.
• Investigations that create more drama than they solve: A poorly handled one turns a manageable issue into a company-wide rumor and three new HR projects to "address the culture."
• Leaders can't decide without HR approval: Leaders can't talk to their own employee without looping in HR first. That's dependency not support.
• HR measures activity not outcomes: Policies written, trainings completed, forms filed. Turnover climbs. HR points to leadership as the problem.

What HR You Need by Company Size (typically):

• Under 50: Leadership training and a fractional HR partner. Full-time is almost always premature.
• 50 to 100: HR administration. Compliance, documentation, operational work. Not a strategic hire yet.
• Over 100: An HR director who builds systems, develops leaders, and sits at the table.

The most expensive HR mistake isn't hiring too late. It's hiring the wrong person too early.

GROW

Pay for Performance. Not Presence.

Most companies give raises based on tenure, likability, and whoever asked loudest. Bonuses go out (if at all) with little connection to who actually added value.

Contractors don't get paid for “trying”. They get paid for “finishing”. That expectation shouldn't disappear when someone becomes an employee.

A-players love performance-based comp. They're already outperforming and now they get credit for it. C-players get uncomfortable (and pissed). Pay attention.

Why Performance Driven Pay This Doesn't Happen:

• No clear definition of winning: If you can't define what success looks like for a role you can't fairly reward it. That's the first thing to fix.
• Fear of the conversation: Tying comp to performance means having honest conversations about performance. Most leaders avoid both.
• Tenure gets rewarded instead: Five years in and still producing the same output as year one. Gets a raise anyway because that's just how it's done.

What Good Looks Like:

• Every role has three to five clear outcomes that define success
• Raises reflect growth in performance not just time served
• Bonuses are tied to results not vibes or friendship to the decision maker
• Reviewed quarterly so nobody is surprised at year end

If someone's results lead to more for the business, they should see it in their paycheck. If they don't, the comp should reflect that too. Not complicated, also, not common.