Tris R., a Recruiter, recently posted something that made me stop scrolling: "Being "open to work" as a recruiter is the fastest way to discover

how broken hiring actually is.

Disagree? explain why."

I do not think that is hyperbole. In fact, if you have ever been a recruiter between roles, you have probably felt the same whiplash: you go from being the person expected to "run the process" to being the person trapped inside it.

And when you are on the outside, you see the full system, not just your piece of it. You see the delays, the mixed messages, the vanity requirements, the ghosting, the tools that do not help, and the quiet incentives that reward inaction over decision. Tris R. is inviting a debate, so I want to respond in that spirit: yes, being open to work exposes broken hiring quickly, and the reasons are structural, not personal.

What recruiters notice first when they are the candidate

Recruiters spend their careers translating: role needs into job ads, candidate stories into hiring manager language, and process steps into expectations. When recruiters become candidates, they suddenly lose the levers they normally pull to keep things moving.

Here are the earliest "tells" that a hiring process is not functioning:

Silence after strong signals. A great call, positive feedback, then nothing for days or weeks.
Shifting goalposts. Requirements change midstream, often after candidates have invested time.
Process without purpose. Extra interviews, extra assessments, and no clear decision criteria.
Conflicting stakeholders. One person loves you, another has a totally different picture of the role.
Speed for some, slowness for others. The process accelerates only when a favored candidate appears.

None of that is new. What changes when you are open to work is volume and proximity. You experience these patterns repeatedly, across companies, in a short window. It becomes obvious that the problem is not "one bad recruiter" or "one disorganized manager". It is a system that is under-designed for decision making.

The core problem: hiring is a decision system disguised as a workflow

Most companies treat hiring like a checklist: open req, post job, screen, interview, offer. But the real work is decision making under uncertainty. When decision rights are unclear, or when leaders are afraid of being wrong, the workflow keeps running while decisions stall.

"Open to work" turns recruiters into end-to-end auditors of how decisions actually happen.

Recruiters can usually compensate for ambiguity when employed. They chase feedback, schedule debriefs, rewrite scorecards, and nudge stakeholders. As candidates, they cannot. So the underlying decision dysfunction becomes visible.

Where hiring breaks and why it keeps breaking

1) Intake is weak, so everything downstream wobbles

A surprising number of roles start with a fuzzy brief: "We need a senior person" or "We need someone strategic". Without crisp outcomes, must-have skills, and tradeoffs (for example, "we will prioritize X over Y"), every interview becomes opinion based.

Result: candidates get inconsistent evaluation, and recruiters get blamed for "not finding the unicorn".

Fix:

Define 3 to 5 outcomes the person must deliver in 6 to 12 months.
Write down non-negotiables and nice-to-haves.
Agree on what the team will trade off (speed vs depth, domain vs generalist, etc.).

2) Job posts become wish lists that repel the right people

When hiring is anxious, job descriptions inflate. Teams add requirements to feel safer, not because the work truly needs them.

Recruiters who are open to work see this from the other side: roles that read like three jobs, salary bands that do not match expectations, and "must have" skills that do not correlate with performance.

Fix:

Cut to essentials. If you would train it, do not list it as a hard requirement.
Add clarity on what success looks like.
Match leveling, responsibilities, and pay.

3) Screening is treated as filtering, not matching

Many screens are designed to reject quickly, not to discover fit. That leads to rigid checkboxes and missed nuance.

Recruiter-candidates notice this instantly because they know how much signal you can gather with better questions.

Fix:

Use structured questions tied to outcomes.
Let candidates demonstrate the work, not just recite resume lines.
Share process and timelines up front.

4) Interviews lack calibration, so bias fills the gap

When panels are not calibrated, each interviewer measures something different. One evaluates culture, another evaluates execution, another chases edge cases. Then the debrief becomes a debate, not an evidence review.

Fix:

Use a scorecard with clear definitions.
Calibrate interviewers on what "good" looks like.
Require written feedback before the debrief to reduce groupthink.

5) Feedback loops are broken, so ghosting becomes normal

Ghosting is often not cruelty, it is avoidance plus overload. But from the candidate side, the impact is the same: you are left in limbo.

Recruiters who are open to work feel the irony most sharply. They know how much trust is lost with each non-update.

Fix:

Set a service-level expectation for updates (for example, every 3 business days).
Use templates, but personalize the decision.
Close loops even when the answer is "no".

6) Accountability is diffuse, so no one owns the experience

Candidate experience sits between HR, talent acquisition, hiring managers, and leadership. If no one owns it, it degrades.

Fix:

Assign a clear owner for the process (often the recruiter) with authority to enforce timelines.
Make interview readiness a requirement to open a role.
Track time-to-decision and candidate drop-off, not just time-to-fill.

Why "open to work" makes this feel even worse

Tris R. is pointing to something psychological as well as operational: when you are open to work, the stakes are higher. Uncertainty costs more. And the hiring market is noisy.

Recruiters in particular face a few extra pressures:

They know the playbook. They can spot vague feedback, internal indecision, or a "backup candidate" dynamic.
They often apply into opaque TA teams. Sometimes the recruiter hiring process is even less structured than other roles.
They are evaluated on paradoxes. "Be consultative" but "move faster" but "do not push back".

So yes, being open to work compresses the learning cycle. You experience enough processes quickly to see patterns, and you have enough domain knowledge to interpret them.

Disagree with Tris R.? Here is the best counterargument

Tris R. asked, "Disagree? explain why." The strongest disagreement is this: hiring is not uniquely broken, it is simply reflecting broader organizational issues. If planning, decision rights, and communication are weak in the company, hiring will be weak too.

That is fair. But it still supports Tris R.'s point. Hiring is a front door to the organization. When it is messy, it is a signal of what work life may look like inside.

Practical fixes teams can implement this quarter

If you are a hiring manager, recruiter, or HR leader who wants fewer broken loops, here is a realistic short list:

Run a real intake. Outcomes, tradeoffs, must-haves, timeline, and decision maker in writing.
Commit to a decision cadence. Debrief within 24 to 48 hours of final interviews.
Use structured interviews. Scorecards, consistent questions, written feedback first.
Communicate like a product team. Set expectations, share next steps, send updates on a schedule.
Measure time-to-decision. If it is slow, fix the decision system, not the sourcing.

These are not "nice to haves". They reduce wasted time for candidates and reduce wasted effort for teams.

Closing thought

What I appreciate about Tris R.'s statement is that it is not a complaint dressed up as a hot take. It is a diagnostic. Being open to work forces recruiters to experience the system the way candidates do, at scale, without internal context, and without influence. That makes the cracks obvious.

If you are building or running a hiring process, take it as free user testing. Recruiters who are open to work are not just job seekers, they are high-signal observers of where your decision making is failing.

This blog post expands on a viral LinkedIn post by Tris R., Recruiter. View the original LinkedIn post ->