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<title>News Feed | Stonor Recruitment</title>
<description>News Feed | Stonor Recruitment</description>
<link>https://www.stonorsearch.com</link>
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<title><![CDATA[When Bots Hire Bots, Who Loses?]]></title>
<link>https://www.stonorsearch.com/news/2026/05/when-bots-hire-bots-who-loses/155</link>
<description><![CDATA[The AI Recruitment Arms Race

Three years ago, the following sentence would’ve sounded ridiculous.

A candidate’s AI agent automatically applies for a job using an AI-written CV, responding to an AI-written advert, before sending an AI-generated message to an AI-powered screening system.

Now, here we are and the whole thing is starting to feel a bit mad.

We’re watching recruitment drift into an arms race where candidates are using AI to get noticed while companies use AI to filter them back out again. Candidates can now apply for hundreds of jobs in a day without really touching the process themselves, while employers are leaning harder into automated screening because hiring managers physically can’t deal with the volume landing in their inboxes.

So now we’ve ended up in a situation where AI writes the advert, AI writes the application, AI screens the CV and AI sends the rejection, all before two actual humans have properly spoken to each other.

That might sound efficient on paper.

In reality, it’s creating a lot of noise and making hiring worse in ways many businesses are only just starting to realise.

Recruitment Is Turning Into a Quantity Game

Recruiters across marketing, SaaS and tech are seeing application numbers explode, but the increase in volume isn’t really translating into better hiring outcomes.

A huge number of applications are now heavily AI-assisted. CVs are rewritten instantly to match keywords. Cover letters are generated in seconds. Entire job searches can be automated while candidates sleep. On the surface, the applications often look polished and convincing. Then the interview starts and it becomes clear very quickly that the person behind the CV doesn’t always match the version the software created.

That’s becoming a serious problem.

Because the more AI-generated applications flood the market, the harder it becomes to spot genuinely strong people amongst the noise. Businesses respond by introducing even more automated screening to cope with the volume, which pushes candidates to rely even more heavily on AI tools to get through the filters.

Round and round it goes.

And along the way, good people start getting missed.

The Best Candidates Don’t Always Look Perfect on Paper

This is the bit many businesses underestimate.

The strongest candidates are rarely identical copies of a job description. Some brilliant people come from unusual backgrounds. Some undersell themselves badly on paper. Some are exceptional communicators in person but terrible at writing CVs. Some have the raw commercial instinct, emotional intelligence or cultural fit that simply doesn’t show up in a keyword search.

A computer struggles with that kind of nuance.

Humans don’t.

That’s why good recruiters still matter so much, particularly in industries like Marketing, and sales where personality, communication and culture fit genuinely affect performance.

At Stonor Search, we spend a huge amount of time actually speaking to candidates properly because hiring somebody is about far more than whether their CV matches a list of requirements. We want to understand how somebody thinks, what motivates them, what type of environment they thrive in and whether they’ll genuinely fit the culture of the business they’re interviewing with.

A good recruiter knows how to get the best out of a candidate while still keeping the client firmly in mind throughout the process. That’s the real skill. It’s understanding people properly enough to know when somebody will thrive in a business and when they won’t, even if the CV looks great.

That judgement is difficult to automate.

We’re Not Anti-AI. We’re Anti-Lazy Hiring.

AI absolutely has a place in recruitment.

Used properly, it can reduce admin, improve workflows, help candidates present themselves more clearly and free recruiters up to spend more time doing the valuable part of the job. We use technology ourselves where it genuinely improves efficiency.

What we don’t believe in is handing over human judgement entirely.

Because hiring is still a people decision.

We don’t use AI to scan or reject CVs because we know too much gets missed when recruitment becomes purely algorithm-driven. Often, the very candidates who end up becoming the best hires are the ones an automated system would’ve filtered out immediately.

The irony in all of this is that businesses are trying to save time by automating hiring, while often creating longer processes, weaker shortlists and more bad interviews in the process.

Technology should support recruitment.

It shouldn’t replace the human part altogether.

Because in a world where bots are increasingly talking to bots, the companies that still understand people properly will probably end up with the best hires.]]></description>
<pubDate>Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<guid>https://www.stonorsearch.com/news/2026/05/when-bots-hire-bots-who-loses/155</guid>
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<title><![CDATA[The Hiring Contradiction: When to Hire Experience & When to Back Potential]]></title>
<link>https://www.stonorsearch.com/news/2026/03/the-hiring-contradiction-when-to-hire-experience-when-to-back-potential/151</link>
<description><![CDATA[When to Hire Experience - and When to Back Potential

Everyone says they hire for potential.

They don’t.

What most companies&nbsp;actually&nbsp;do is hire someone who’s already done the exact same job before - usually at a direct competitor, in the same market, using the same playbook.

It feels logical. Sensible, even.

Low risk. Quick win. Job done.

And to be fair - sometimes it&nbsp;is&nbsp;the right call.

Sometimes the perfect candidate really is the one who’s done the job before, in your space, and can hit the ground running from day one.

But the problem?&nbsp;That’s become the default approach. Not the exception.

What Happens When Everyone Hires Like This

If every company hires the “ready-made” candidate:

Talent just circulates between the same businesses. Teams start to look eerily similar and genuinely different thinking never gets a look in.

Over time?

Ideas feel familiar. Progress slows. Growth becomes incremental at best and stagnant at worst.

Hiring for experience gives you predictability.&nbsp;But it doesn’t always give you progression.

The Real Opportunity: Transferable Talent

The best hires don’t always look perfect on paper.

They don’t tick every box.
They haven’t always worked in your exact sector.
Their CV doesn’t mirror your job spec line for line.

And that’s often the point.

Because what they&nbsp;do&nbsp;bring is far more valuable:


	Experience solving similar problems in different environments
	The ability to adapt quickly
	A perspective your current team doesn’t already have


This is where real upside lives.&nbsp;Not in replication - but in translation.

Why Most Hiring Processes Get This Wrong

Because assessing transferable talent is harder.&nbsp;There’s no tidy checklist.

It takes judgement.
It takes time.
And it takes a bit of confidence to back something that isn’t an obvious “yes”.

So instead, companies lean into process:


	Rigid job specifications
	Long, structured interview stages
	And increasingly… AI-led screening


All designed to reduce risk.&nbsp;But in doing so, they often remove the very candidates who create differentiation.

The Problem with AI in Recruitment

AI in hiring is brilliant at spotting patterns.&nbsp;But only the patterns you ask it to find.&nbsp;

So if your brief says:

“Must have done X in Y industry”

That’s exactly what it returns.&nbsp;More of the same.&nbsp;

Now again, sometimes ,that&nbsp;is&nbsp;what you need.&nbsp;But if that’s all you ever look for, you’ll consistently miss the candidates who don’t fit neatly into those boxes.

The ones who are adjacent, not identical. The ones whose strengths don’t keyword-match perfectly. The ones whose potential doesn’t jump off the CV.

Filtered out - before a conversation even happens.

Efficient? Yes.&nbsp;Comprehensive? Not even close.

How the Best Hiring Managers Get the Balance Right

The best hiring managers don’t ignore experience.&nbsp;They just don’t rely on it entirely.

They know when a role genuinely requires someone who’s “done it before” - and when it doesn’t.

And when they’re open to broader profiles, they focus on three things:

1. Pattern Recognition

Can they explain&nbsp;why&nbsp;something worked, not just what they did?

2. Learning Velocity

How quickly have they adapted across different challenges or environments?

3. First-Principles Thinking

If you take away their previous playbook, can they still solve the problem?

These are the signals that actually travel.

Across roles. Across sectors. Across businesses.

Why This Still Requires a Human Approach

You won’t uncover any of this through CV screening alone and you definitely won’t uncover it through AI.&nbsp;You uncover it through conversation.

Through how someone thinks.
How they approach problems.
How they make decisions.

At Stonor, we spend a disproportionate amount of time doing exactly that.&nbsp;Because sometimes the best hire&nbsp;is&nbsp;the obvious one.

But often - it isn’t.

And if your process only ever surfaces the obvious, you’re leaving a lot of value on the table.

The Bottom Line

Most companies optimise for safety.&nbsp;The best companies optimise for&nbsp;judgement.

They know when to hire experience and when to back potential.

The risk is hiring someone who looks right.

The reward is hiring someone who&nbsp;is&nbsp;right.

And those two things are similar just often enough… to be misleading.]]></description>
<pubDate>Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<guid>https://www.stonorsearch.com/news/2026/03/the-hiring-contradiction-when-to-hire-experience-when-to-back-potential/151</guid>
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<title><![CDATA[The Personal Brand Pressure Cooker]]></title>
<link>https://www.stonorsearch.com/news/2026/03/the-personal-brand-pressure-cooker/150</link>
<description><![CDATA[The Personal Brand Pressure Cooker

Why every marketer suddenly feels like they should be “posting”

Spend five minutes on LinkedIn and you’d be forgiven for thinking every marketer in the world is a thought leader.

Frameworks.
Growth playbooks.
Carousels explaining how someone built a “$10M pipeline in 90 days”.

And, of course, the classic opener:

“A lot of people have been asking me about…”

The message, subtle or otherwise, is clear.

If you’re not posting…
you’re probably falling behind.

Somewhere in the last few years, particularly in marketing and SaaS, we seem to have collectively decided that&nbsp;a personal brand is now part of the job description.

But is it?

Or have we just created a professional environment where&nbsp;looking like a great marketer is starting to rival actually being one?

When reputation moved into the open

Not that long ago, most marketers built their reputation inside a company.

Your credibility came from fairly simple things:

Campaigns that worked.
Revenue that moved.
Products that launched.
Teams that grew.

People knew who the good operators were because…well, the business results tended to give it away.

Now a lot of that reputation building happens in public.

LinkedIn has essentially become&nbsp;a running commentary on the marketing profession itself.

Strategies get dissected.
Playbooks get shared.
Opinions travel quickly.

In many ways, that’s a good thing. Marketing used to be far more opaque. Now people are much more open about&nbsp;what actually works.

But it has created a slightly strange side effect.

A quiet pressure to be&nbsp;visible.

The creeping expectation to “show up”

Speak to marketers privately and you’ll hear a version of the same thing.

People feel like they&nbsp;should&nbsp;be posting.

Not necessarily because they want to.

But because:


	it signals expertise
	it builds credibility
	recruiters are watching
	hiring managers are watching
	everyone else seems to be doing it


And in fairness, there’s some logic to it.

A strong personal brand can absolutely accelerate a career.

People who share thoughtful ideas tend to build networks faster.
Their thinking travels further.
Opportunities sometimes find them rather than the other way around.

All good things.

The problem is when visibility starts being mistaken for ability.

Posting is a skill. Marketing is several.

Let’s be fair about this.

Posting well on LinkedIn is not easy.

It requires:


	strong writing
	understanding what resonates
	consistency
	a sense for what sparks conversation


In other words…&nbsp;content marketing skills.

Which means many of the people doing it well are genuinely good marketers in that particular discipline.

But being a strong marketer overall, particularly at leadership level, is a much broader job.

It involves:


	commercial judgement
	strategic thinking
	making difficult trade-offs
	leading teams
	executing under pressure
	delivering results over time


None of which can be fully captured in a carousel about “3 lessons from my career in demand gen”.

The interview tends to sort this out fairly quickly

Here’s the reality from the hiring side. A visible personal brand might help someone get noticed. It might help open a door.

But once someone is sitting in an interview process, the conversation changes very quickly.

Hiring managers aren’t asking:

“How many impressions did your LinkedIn post get?”

They’re asking things like:


	What problem were you solving?
	How did you approach it?
	What went wrong?
	What would you do differently now?
	What impact did it actually have on the business?


And this is usually where the distinction becomes pretty obvious.

Between someone who can&nbsp;talk about marketing
and someone who has&nbsp;actually done a lot of it.

A polished online presence might get attention.

But substance tends to reveal itself pretty quickly.

One thing that’s worth saying - particularly from a recruiter’s perspective is that&nbsp;personal brand rarely plays a major role in how candidates are shortlisted.

When we’re assessing marketers for senior roles, the focus tends to be fairly traditional.

We’re looking at:


	the problems someone has solved
	the scale they’ve operated at
	the commercial impact they’ve had
	the environments they’ve worked in
	how they think about strategy and execution
	How they might fit within the team culture


In reality,&nbsp;LinkedIn activity barely features in that evaluation.

In fact, if we’re being honest, it can occasionally work the other way.

If someone has built a strong personal brand&nbsp;and&nbsp;the thinking behind it is genuinely interesting, that’s great. It can be a nice signal of curiosity and perspective.

But if someone is posting frequently and the content is… well… thin, generic or clearly designed purely for engagement, it can raise more questions than it answers.

Perhaps the pressure is slightly overblown

None of this is to say personal branding is pointless.

Sharing ideas publicly can be hugely valuable.

It can:


	grow your network
	sharpen your thinking
	create opportunities
	help other people learn


But the idea that every marketer now needs to become a content creator feels a little overcooked.

Some brilliant marketers simply prefer to&nbsp;do the work rather than narrate it.

And interestingly, when hiring conversations get serious, the people who stand out most are rarely the loudest online.

They’re the ones who can clearly explain:

what they built
why they built it
what it changed for the business.

Personal brand might help you get noticed. It might help you get the first meeting.

But eventually every hiring manager arrives at the same question:

Can this person actually do the job?

And that answer has never lived in a LinkedIn post…because while personal brand might get you through the door…

It’s very difficult to bluff your way through the room.]]></description>
<pubDate>Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<guid>https://www.stonorsearch.com/news/2026/03/the-personal-brand-pressure-cooker/150</guid>
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