Don't spend a penny on AI until you've done this

Every week, someone asks me the same thing.

What are the best recruitment companies doing with AI? What tools keep coming up? What would I recommend?

And I get it. The question makes sense.

But without fail, the best businesses I'm speaking with aren't starting there. They're not asking what tools to demo. They're starting inwardly first.

Here's something worth sitting with: there are recruitment companies right now with very light tech stacks and excellent billings per head. And there are companies with the opposite. Stacked with tools, underwhelming on output.

The difference isn't the software.

The smart companies are starting with their workflows. Understanding them properly. Finding where the real constraints are. And only then going looking for a solution.

That's what this edition is about.

Before you buy a new tool, do this.

Always start here. Before you bring in any tool. Before you even look at one.

Understand your workflows. Find the issues. Locate the bottlenecks. Understand what fixing them would actually mean. Then, and only then, start looking for a solution.

This isn't just for recruitment leaders. I speak to plenty of individual recruiters who are proactive enough to solve their own workflow problems before their company gets involved. Be that recruiter.

The AI game is won by understanding your workflows first. How things work. What's broken. What you'd love to be able to do. Then layering technology onto that context.

If your strategy is to try loads of tools, or bring in a big all-in-one platform because it looks great on a demo, you won't win this game. Here's what winning looks like instead.

Step 1: Understand your workflows.

So many recruitment businesses don't actually know how they do what they do. The best ones know exactly how.

Before anything else, get this documented. Start with the core ones:

Do you actually know how each of these works, step by step, right now?

If not, start here. You have to.

Step 2: Find the constraints.

Once your workflows are mapped, prioritise by time and resource allocation.

Where are your recruiters spending most of their time? Which workflows are eating the most hours?

Double click into those. Where are things slowing down? Where are things breaking? Then ask the only question that matters at this stage: if we could fix this, what would that mean?

No limits on your thinking here. Lead with "if we could do X it would mean Y" and figure out the how later. Come out of this with your top three to five constraints across your top three workflows.

That's your list. That's what you're solving for.

Step 3: Define the outcome before you look for anything.

Now you know what you're trying to fix. Before you open a single browser tab, document it properly.

For each constraint, write down three things. 

Here's what that might look like in practice.

Workflow: Job Brief to Long List.

Today: consultant takes a brief, writes notes, manually creates a job posting, writes candidate messages from scratch, builds a fit assessment off memory.

Solved: transcript from the brief meeting automatically feeds an authentic job posting, a first candidate message, and a structured fit assessment with non-negotiables and nice to haves already mapped.

Impact: two to three hours saved per job. Consistent quality across every brief. Consultants focused on the work that actually needs them.

Clear problem. Clear outcome. Clear impact.

Before you go looking, add one more thing to that document. List the tools you already have. Because the best tool for the job isn't just the one that solves the problem. It's the one that solves the problem and plays nicely with what you've already got.

Compatibility matters. Integration matters. A tool that sits in isolation and creates a new workflow rather than improving an existing one is just another problem.

Now when you go looking, you're not browsing. You're shopping with a list. A defined problem, a clear outcome, and a picture of what it needs to work with.

AI and technology work best when laid on top of context. The context is your workflows. Get that right first and every tool decision becomes obvious.

Workflows first. Everything else follows.

This week I sat down with Zach a solo founder two years into building his own business, after spending a decade helping build other people's recruitment companies.

In year two, he hit back-to-back $1 million in billings. Across five clients.

That number alone tells you something. This episode is packed with client development strategies you can take straight to your desk tomorrow.

Before your next leadership meeting, run this quick diagnostic with your team.

Ask each consultant to write down the three tasks in their week that take the most time but feel the least valuable. Not opinions on what they'd like to do less of.

Specifically: what takes the most time for the least return.

Then look for patterns across the answers.

Where do three or more people say the same thing? That's your starting point.

You now have a real, evidence-based shortlist of your biggest workflow constraints. From there you can start asking the right question: what actually solves this?

That exercise costs you nothing. And it's more useful than any software demo you'll sit through this month.

If you had to name the one constraint in your business that's costing the most time or money right now, could you?

Keep smashing it & honing your craft!

Hishem x

Know a recruiter who needs to hear this? Send it their way.