Why Your Recruitment Strategy Works Perfectly… For a World That No Longer Exists

There was a time, not even that long ago, when recruitment was not a profession. It was something HR would just “take care of”. HR handled contracts, sick leave, performance reviews, and oh right: when a vacancy opened up, someone would leaf through a stack of CVs coming off the fax machine, schedule a few interviews, and boom: position filled! Because there was supply. A lot of supply. We’re talking about a time when factories regularly shut down, unions took to the streets, and the general message to employees was “be grateful you get to stay.”

The job was easy. Anyone could take your place. Workers were replaceable. Companies were powerful. Jobs were scarce. An employment contract actually meant something. It provided structure and held real value. A whole generation of recruiters and workers has no idea what that world looked like.

And then everything changed…

Over the past few decades, we’ve seen explosive growth in healthcare, IT, engineering, and energy. Entirely new industries have emerged: high-tech, data, biotech. At the same time, the workforce is shrinking and roles are becoming more complex. We’re shifting into a permanent high gear.

The result is structural labour shortages. Not temporary, but permanent. We’re living in a time that will end up in history books as The Era of Unprecedented Talent Scarcity. And let’s be honest: the war for talent has an obvious winner: the talent itself. Everyone gets approached. Everyone is in demand. Everyone has choices. Work is literally everywhere. The employee is more powerful than ever. And so recruitment has to evolve. Fast.

Where Did the Rise of Recruitment Models Come From?

Recruitment models emerged because companies suddenly had to compete for talent, which meant recruitment could no longer be a side task for HR. It became a profession, a discipline —and eventually, an entire industry.

In the 21st century, recruitment has had to evolve rapidly, becoming strategic, data-driven, marketing-savvy, tech-enabled, relationship-oriented and able to communicatie attractively, all at once. In short, by integrating advanced technology recruitment professionalised at a pace many other fields could only dream of.

The Big Three

And like any field that matures, it developed theories, models, and frameworks, many borrowed from, of course, the world of marketing. Marketing: the industry that has a model for absolutely everything. Recruitment gladly adopted that playbook.

1. AIDA (1898)

The grandmother of all funnels. Attention > Interest > Desire > Action. Originally made for advertising, now used everywhere in recruitment marketing, job ads, and sourcing messages. Simple. Elegant. 126 years old.

2. DAGMAR (1961)

AIDA’s intellectual sibling. Awareness > Comprehension > Conviction > Action. Focused on emotional and cognitive engagement — useful for employer branding. A bit more sophisticated. Still assumes people behave rationally.

3. Kotler’s 6As (2017)

In 2017 Philip Kotler woke up. The year Fyre Festival collapsed in real-time, fidget spinners were everywhere, and Donald Trump was president. Chaos everywhere. A perfect year to add extra As to AIDA. Because Mr. Marketing 4.0 looked at AIDA and said: “Looks good, but let’s make it longer”.

Kotler, darling… six A’s, really?

Is replacing ‘Interest’ with ‘Appeal’ really the innovation we’ve been waiting for? And is developing an ‘Interest’ in something substantially different from something having an ‘Appeal’ to you? It feels as if Philly spent so much time digging through the thesaurus until every word was forced to start with the same letter. It rolls off the tongue nicely, but it strongly suggests that the most important ‘A’ in this model secretly just stands for ‘Author’.

Structurally, it’s AIDA on steroids. AIDA with a blowout. But okay, it recognises that people talk, compare, and influence each other. Something relevant for candidates today. So you win, Kotler. For now…

There are more models, of course. The Marketing Funnel. The Golden Circle. See-Think-Do-Care. The Flywheel. Great thinking tools. All of them. But here’s the problem with all these models…

Why Don’t Traditional Recruitment Models Work Anymore?

Traditional recruitment models no longer work because they were built for a world where the company held all the power, the candidate had few choices, people moved neatly through a funnel created by someone else, and decisions were linear and rational. In other words: perfect models for a perfect world. The kind consultants dream about. A universe where humans behave predictably, decisions follow logic, and nobody ever ghosts anyone.

All these models are fundamentally ‘Inside-Out.’ They describe what we, as a company, need to do to get someone moving. They rely on a lovely, logical equation. But that world is gone. Talent has won the war. Welcome to 2025, where humans don’t follow your model. They follow their mood, and sometimes their cat.

Nowadays candidates have unlimited choice. They can compare roles, cultures, benefits and hiring experiences in minutes. They’re not tied to one geography, one employer brand or one career path.. If something doesn’t feel right, they’re gone with a single swipe, click or message. Loyalty is no longer assumed, it’s earned. Uncertainty is the norm. People change their minds because life changes constantly around them. A role that seems perfect today may feel irrelevant next week. 

Priorities shift, markets move, and personal situations evolve. This means decisions are fluid, timing is unpredictable, and nothing about a candidate journey is linear anymore. Candidates don’t walk through your funnel. They dance around it, step out of it, jump back in, disappear, reappear, and sometimes set it on fire just for fun.

And on top of that, there’s a bigger issue. Most models assume a person who moves through a logical sequence, predictably and step-by-step, exactly as the model maker hopes. That assumption is the trap. It’s the old belief that if you grab someone’s attention, they’ll become interested, and if you make them interested, they’ll desire whatever you want them to desire.

A + I + D = A. 

Or worse:

A + A + A + A + A + A = A. 

As if a human being will always fall for whatever the creator of the model wants to sell. A world where people behave like tidy dominoes.

Recruitment in 2026 doesn’t run on perfect models. It runs on human behaviour: messy, emotional, inconsistent, wonderfully unpredictable. And once you understand that, you’ll know exactly where to focus: not on the model, but on the real reason someone doesn’t move to Advocacy, even when they’ve been in Action mode for a while. Influence happens there. On the real moments that shape a candidate’s decision: the message they read, the feeling it gives them, the timing, the context. More choice creates more hesitation. And hesitation is human.

Take ghosting. Not a single classic model accounts for it, not AIDA, not DAGMAR, not Kotler’s alphabet soup. Yet here we are, in a market where both candidates and companies simply disappear mid-conversation. No follow-up. No closure. Just silence. As if that hour you spent talking about career plans, terrible former bosses, and growth opportunities never happened. Ghosting isn’t part of any model. But it’s very much part of today’s reality.

And remember the Google brainteaser era? How many golf balls can you fit into a Boeing 747? That world no longer exists. If you asked that today, you’d immediately see the candidate thinking: “Why is this relevant to the role? Are you a company or a trivia night team?” The tables have turned. Companies don’t choose people anymore, people choose companies. And they make that choice based on how they feel. Because every human being is unique, a standard one-size-fits-all model simply doesn’t cut it anymore.

How Do Candidates Actually Experience the Recruitment Process?

Candidates experience recruitment based on how they feel. Companies design recruitment based on what they need: process, compliance, checkboxes. These two worlds hardly ever meet. Just look at the difference:

Just look at the difference:

Stage 0: Still Living (Not Thinking About You)

• Candidate: I’m fine. I’m not looking. Netflix > career.
• Company: We posted the vacancy yesterday. Why aren’t qualified people magically appearing? Should we boost it? Buy employer branding? Yell louder on LinkedIn?

Stage 1: The Hmm… Moment

• Candidate: A tiny spark of awareness. Something’s off. Maybe a bad meeting. Maybe a passed-over promotion. Maybe just… a feeling.
• Company: SEND MORE JOB ADS. TARGET EVERYONE. BUY ANOTHER TOOL.

Stage 2: Scanning

• Candidate: Casual scrolling. Half-interested. Zero commitment. Dipping a toe in the water.
• Company: We need a 12-step process, three assessments, a motivation letter, and a case study due Friday. Also: salary slips, please.

Never declare your love if the other person isn’t ready yet.

Stage 3: Getting Serious

• Candidate: Thoughtful comparing. Evaluating culture, sanity, trust. Actually reading your About page.
• Company: Did they upload their CV AND manually enter the same info into the ATS? No? Reject.

Candidates evaluate your culture. You evaluate their data-entry skills.

Stage 4: The Sanity Check

• Candidate: Are you actually normal? Are you as real in person as you pretend to be online? Or am I about to walk into a circus of red flags?
• Company: Let’s put them in front of four interviewers… all asking the same questions.

The candidate checks for red flags. Companies check for compliance.

Stage 5: Empowerment

• Candidate: I’ll move forward if I get clarity, trust, and control.
• Company: Automated message: Thank you for your interest. Processing time: 3-14 business days. Do not reply.

Candidates want ownership and the feeling of being seen. Companies give them a ticket number. Companies give them ticket numbers.

Stage 6: The Big Ask

• Candidate: Expecting a fair offer that matches the whole journey. Reading your culture in how you make the offer.
• Company: Start 15% lower and see if they flinch.

Stage 7: Please Don’t Regret This

• Candidate: Highest-risk period. Needs reassurance, communication, and a growth plan.
• Company: Congrats! See you in eight weeks. Also… HR is on holiday.

See the pattern? Companies design for control, structure, efficiency, dashboards, compliance. Candidates decide based on trust, safety, clarity, timing, sanity, desire. Those two worlds barely overlap. And that’s why hiring feels so broken — and gets harder every year you keep doing it the same way.

What Is the 7S Model?

The 7S Model is a recruitment framework based on real human behaviour rather than marketing theory. So does the world really need another model? Not really. But I also have an ego to feed and mine is bigger than Kotler’s. So here, take this, Philly: the 7S Model!

1. Still Living: They’re alive, functional, not thinking about you.
2. Something’s Off: The micro-moment of curiosity. A spark.
3. Scanning: Low-effort exploring. Zero commitment.
4. Serious Mode: Deliberate comparison. Emotional evaluation.
5. Sanity Check: Are you normal or a red flag disguised as a job?
6. Steering: They move forward only if they feel control.
7. Signing & Staying: Offer acceptance — and the crucial post-offer phase.

Today, talent has options. Real options. They evaluate you just as much as you evaluate them. So it’s worth thinking deeply: What do you bring into each stage of the journey? What value, clarity, trust, or direction are you adding at every step?

And remember: the candidate is not applying to you. You are applying to the candidate.

So, what’s the real lesson here?

The key takeaway is that recruitment is not about convincing people, it’s about not giving them reasons to run away. This whole model from I’m just living my life to Fine, I’ll work for you isn’t a funnel. Not a framework. Not a process flow. And definitely not whatever over-engineered acronym Marketing would have turned it into. It’s just humans. Humans with routines. Humans with tiny Hmm moments. Humans who scroll LinkedIn when they should be doing something else. Humans who want to feel safe, valued, respected and not surprised by colleagues earning 400 euros more for the same job.

Make it human. Make it logical. Make it trustworthy. Make it worth the leap. Do that, and people will happily go from living their life… to working for you.