A few weeks ago someone asked me:
“If recruitment business was going so well... why leave?”
It’s a fair question.
This year alone, while barely focusing on recruitment, I made over €150,000 through a handful of introductions.
I was probably one or two recruiters away from building a €500K agency.
Instead, I walked away.
Because recruitment taught me something I couldn’t unsee.
Hiring isn’t broken where people think it is.
Most people imagine hiring begins with a job posting.
“We’re looking for a Senior Product Designer.”
“We need a Staff Designer.”
“AI Native.”
The posting goes live.
Candidates apply.
Recruiters source.
Interviews begin.
Everyone believes that’s the beginning.
It isn’t.
Hiring actually starts weeks before that.
With one conversation.
I spent eight years sitting in hiring kickoffs.
They usually sounded like this.
Hiring manager: “We need a Staff Designer.”
Me: “Okay. What should they achieve?”
Silence.
People could describe the person.
Not the outcome.
Instead of defining success, they defined skills.
Now this process is even easier.
Someone opens ChatGPT.
“Write a Staff Product Designer job description.”
Twenty seconds later they have a polished document.
Leadership.
Strategy.
Systems thinking.
Stakeholder management.
Cross-functional collaboration.
Looks fantastic.
Except...
It’s mostly the average of thousands of other job descriptions.
Historical hiring data.
Historical expectations.
Historical language.
Not your company.
Not your roadmap.
Not your actual problem.
That single document becomes the foundation for everything.
Recruiters source against it.
Candidates rewrite their portfolios around it.
Interview panels prepare questions from it.
Salary bands get attached to it.
Performance expectations quietly emerge from it.
And yet nobody has answered the only question that matters.
What will success actually look like six months after this person joins?
Six months.
Because that’s when they’ll actually be contributing.
By then your roadmap may have changed.
Priorities may have shifted.
Your AI strategy may be completely different.
The project that created the urgency might not even exist anymore.
The recruiter.
The candidate.
The ATS.
LinkedIn.
The portfolio.
The interview.
The market.
AI.
None of those are the root problem.
The recruitment process itself isn’t where hiring starts to break.
But during the process, you do start to notice that it’s broken.
Ever left an interview wondering whether everyone was interviewing for the same role?
You probably weren’t imagining it.
One interviewer asks about execution.
Another wants strategy.
Another asks leadership questions.
Or maybe they are asking the same questions?
A VP joins because they “should be involved.”
Nobody is evaluating against one shared definition of success.
Because one was never created.
So everyone improvises.
Candidates think they’re failing.
The hiring industry loves efficiency.
AI sourcing.
AI scheduling.
AI note-taking.
AI interview summaries.
AI rejection emails.
Ironically, rejection emails are becoming one of the best-automated parts of hiring.
Back in the day, I could spend 15-20 minutes crafting 1 rejection email.
Making sure that I don’t damage the brand of a company, but I also give as much value to my candidates as possible.
Now?
We regret to inform you.
Meanwhile, the most important decision remains almost entirely manual.
Why are we hiring this person in the first place?
We automate everything after the thinking.
Almost nothing before it.
Walking away from recruitment wasn’t about leaving an industry.
This is my whole expertise and, honestly, a part of my personality.
But I wanted to do something that would create strong leverage and help me break this f-up cycle of poor hiring
I don’t want to build software that helps recruiters process another thousand applications.
I want to help companies become clear enough that they don’t create unnecessary applications in the first place.
I want to educate candidates so that they know how to be a strong applicant or what other opportunities they have besides full-time roles.
Clear expectations.
Clear roles.
Clear outcomes.
Clear interviews.
Clear growth paths.
Everything downstream becomes better.
Recruiters become better.
Candidates have a fairer experience.
Managers make better decisions.
AI becomes useful instead of making confusion faster.
(no offence to any AI Rec Tech founders, really)
I used to think recruitment was the business I was building.
Now I realize it was research.
Eight years of watching hundreds of hiring decisions.
Thousands of interviews.
Thousands of candidates.
Dozens of companies.
Not to become the best recruiter.
To understand why hiring keeps disappointing everyone involved.
That’s the company I’m building now.
Not another recruitment business.
A better hiring system.
Everything possible with my very first step - PATHS.
Are you with me on this mission?
Read you soon,
Lena
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