Hiring isn't broken because of recruiters.

After 8 years in recruitment, thousands of interviews, hundreds of hires, and 5 years teaching more than 65,000 designers how to navigate hiring, I’ve stopped blaming individuals.

• Recruiters blame candidates.

• Candidates blame recruiters.

• Hiring managers blame HR.

• Founders blame “the market.”

• LinkedIn blames AI.

Everyone has someone to point at.

But I think we’re looking in the wrong direction.

Hiring isn’t failing because people are incompetent.

It’s failing because we’ve designed a system where almost nobody is equipped to do their job well.

Here are the five biggest cracks I see.

Whenever I ask recruiters why they chose recruitment, the answer is almost never:

“Because I’ve dreamed about becoming a recruiter since I was a kid.”

Most people fall into it.

There isn’t a universally recognized career path.

There isn’t a widely respected qualification.

Companies rarely invest in teaching recruiters how to become exceptional interviewers, talent advisors or relationship builders.

Instead, many are measured on speed.

How many calls?

How many CVs?

How many hires?

That’s a completely different job.

When craftsmanship isn’t rewarded, you shouldn’t be surprised when people stop treating it like one.

The industry has accidentally optimized for transactions instead of judgment.

Someone becomes a fantastic Senior Designer.

Then Staff / Manager.

Congratulations.

Tomorrow you’re interviewing candidates.

Nobody teaches them:

• how to evaluate portfolios

• how to reduce bias

• how to run structured interviews

• how to align interview panels

• how to separate “I like this person” from “this person will succeed here”

Hiring becomes another responsibility squeezed between roadmap meetings and design reviews.

We expect expertise without education.

Then wonder why interviews feel inconsistent and forced.

Well, because it is.

Everyone loves talking about AI.

The reality is far less exciting.

Most hiring teams still spend their days inside Applicant Tracking Systems that are basic spreadsheets with extra buttons.

People imagine candidates being rejected by sophisticated algorithms.

Most of the time?

• A recruiter is manually clicking through applications.

• Copying notes.

• Moving candidates between stages.

• Scheduling interviews.

• Following up.

• Repeating the same work hundreds of times.

AI isn’t the bottleneck. We do not need more agents reviewing and rejecting candidates.

We need a better understanding of how to set up an open role on a company's side, and what makes a strong candidate on the applicant's side.

This is the part that frustrates me most.

Design schools teach design.

Bootcamps teach tools.

Courses teach Figma.

Very few teach:

• how hiring decisions are made

• how recruiters read portfolios

• how hiring managers compare candidates

• how to explain impact

• how to network

• how to negotiate

Then we act surprised when talented people struggle.

I’ve met incredible designers whose portfolios undersold years of work.

Nobody had ever shown them how hiring actually works.

We spend years teaching people how to build products.

Almost no time teaching them how to build careers.

How sad.

Ask 10 companies what a Staff Designer is.

You’ll get 10 different answers.

Now add AI.

Suddenly everyone is hiring:

• AI Product Designers

• AI-First Designers

• Product Engineers

• Design Engineers

• Founding Designers

• Principal Designers

• Staff Designers

Some titles describe seniority.

Others describe technology.

Others describe responsibilities.

Candidates respond by stuffing every keyword into their LinkedIn headline.

Companies respond by inventing new titles.

Everyone spends hours debating labels while the actual expectations remain completely unclear.

I ask, "What is this person expected to deliver in 3-6-9 months?"

Guess yourself what the answer is.

The result is confusion on both sides.

People often tell me:

“The hiring market is terrible.”

I don’t think that’s the full story.

I’ve worked with incredible recruiters.

I’ve hired extraordinary designers.

I’ve partnered with thoughtful founders.

I’ve met hiring managers who wanted to build amazing teams.

The problem is that we’ve built a system where good people constantly have to fight the process instead of being supported by it.

When candidates, recruiters, hiring managers, and founders are all frustrated at the same time...

That’s no longer an individual problem.

That's the problem of the whole system.

People often ask why I walked away from something I was good at.

I could have kept recruiting.

I could have scaled an agency.

Instead, I became obsessed with a bigger question.

What would hiring look like if we redesigned it from first principles?

• What if recruiters were treated like professionals?

• What if hiring managers were actually trained to hire?

• What if candidates understood the system before entering it?

• What if expertise mattered more than keyword matching?

I don’t have all the answers yet.

But I know this much:

The future of hiring won’t be built by adding another AI layer on top of broken processes.

It will come from redesigning the system itself.

And that’s the problem I want to spend the next decade working on.

Are you with me?

Read you soon,

Lena