Every now and then I come across a piece of recruitment technology that makes me stop and think.
Jack & Jill is one of them.
Jack works for the candidate. He gets to know their experience, ambitions and preferences, searches millions of jobs for suitable opportunities and can help with everything from interview preparation to salary negotiation.
Jill works for the employer. Give her a brief and she searches for suitable people, producing an initial shortlist potentially within minutes.
Then comes the interesting bit.
If Jill thinks the candidate is right for the company and Jack thinks the opportunity is right for the candidate, they can make the introduction.
No application. Potentially no job board. And potentially no recruitment consultant sitting between them.
Why this matters
We've spent years talking about AI helping recruiters do their jobs better. Jack & Jill raises a slightly different question: what if AI starts doing meaningful parts of the recruitment process itself?
It searches, matches, qualifies and introduces. And because Jack maintains an ongoing relationship with candidates, the ambition is to understand not just what somebody can do, but what they might actually want to do.
The economics are interesting too. Jack is free for candidates, while Jill currently charges employers 10% of first-year salary when somebody is hired. The company also announced a $40 million Series A in September, so there's some serious money behind the idea.
Who should be worried?
If much of your value as an agency comes from finding candidates, matching CVs to jobs and sending profiles to clients, this sort of technology should get your attention.
But that doesn't mean recruiters suddenly become redundant.
Great recruiters challenge briefs, understand markets, influence people, manage difficult situations and build relationships. They persuade people to consider opportunities they weren't looking for and know when the obvious match isn't necessarily the right one.
The bigger threat may therefore be to average recruitment.
And in-house teams shouldn't assume this only affects agencies. If a hiring manager can brief an AI agent directly and receive interested, qualified candidates, the value of internal recruiters also moves away from sourcing and administration towards hiring strategy, assessment, candidate experience and advising the business.
The really interesting bit
For me, Jack might actually be more significant than Jill.
Imagine everyone having an AI career agent permanently working on their behalf. It knows what you earn, where you want to go, what motivates you and what might persuade you to move.
You're not looking for a job. Your agent is simply always looking out for you.
Now put another AI agent on the employer side doing exactly the same thing.
Recruitment starts looking rather different.
This doesn't mean the end of the recruiter. But it does raise an uncomfortable question for our industry:
If technology can increasingly provide the access, searching, matching and introductions, what are clients actually paying recruiters for?
The answer increasingly needs to be more than a CV.
