Tired of losing sleep over hiring?

I have had a few conversations recently that have really stuck with me. Business owners building something genuinely exciting, surrounded by brilliant people, all telling me the same thing. What keeps them up at night is not cash flow. Not competition. People.

Specifically, finding them. Keeping them. Making sure the next person through the door adds to something they have spent years carefully building, rather than quietly dismantling it.

And all of this against the backdrop of a real, persistent skills shortage. It is not an excuse, it is the landscape right now.

This is not new. We have been here before.

And now I show my age. Years ago we had university milk rounds. Companies would descend on campuses, meet students face to face, build relationships and fill their pipelines with people they had actually spent time with. It worked. It was personal. It was human.

Then somewhere along the way we decided events were not an efficient use of time. Technology promised us a faster, cheaper way to hire and we took it. Job boards, online applications, automated screening. The milk round felt old fashioned.

But the tables have turned. Businesses are waking up to what was lost and realising that the most efficient thing they can do is invest in relationships before they need them. Events are back. Open days are back. Getting in front of universities is back. And it is not nostalgia, it is strategy.

Let me give you a real example.

Just last week a client of mine found out on Friday that a job board hire was a no show for a crucial role. A Friday. For a role that needed filling immediately.

By Monday they had someone in place.

Not because they panicked and posted another ad. Because they already had a network. They had already met this candidate, already had conversations with them, already taken the time to get to know them as a person. When the call came there was no uncertainty, no lengthy process, no leap of faith. It was a straightforward yes.

That is the power of community hiring. It does not just make the good times better. It saves you when things go wrong.

So how are the best companies approaching this?

Yes, job boards still have a place. Online ads widen the pool and that matters. But there is something no algorithm can replicate. Relationships. Knowing people. Being known. Having a warm community of talent who already understand what you are about, long before a vacancy even exists.

I am seeing this more and more, even with larger firms. Open days. University visits. Meeting people where they actually are rather than waiting for them to find you. And it works, not just as a recruitment tactic, but as a genuine signal of interest. You are saying we see you, we want you in our world, before you have ever needed anything from them.

That matters more than people realise.

A word on AI in hiring

AI is creeping into the recruitment process and I think we need to talk about it honestly. Used well, it can save time. But lean on it too heavily and you risk mechanising something that should be deeply human. Your workplace culture is not a checklist. It is lived, felt and built over time by real people.

AI hiring tools screen against a set of criteria. On paper that sounds fair. In reality it can be anything but. The candidate who does not quite fit the mould on paper, the one who is less experienced but hungry, curious and the kind of person who lifts a room, they get filtered out before anyone has even met them. And sometimes that person is exactly who you need.

The least experienced candidate in the room is not always the wrong one. Sometimes they are the best investment you will ever make.

It goes beyond referrals

Community hiring goes further than referral schemes. It is less transactional. It is about building a community around your culture, your mission, your people, so that when the time comes, the pipeline is not a panic. It is already there.

The companies doing this well are not just filling roles. They are creating belonging before the contract is signed.

And in a world where talent has choices, that might just be your biggest competitive advantage.

Over to you

What is your experience with community or network hiring? I would love to hear what is working for people right now.

Worried about bias or lack of inclusiveness with this approach? I will be covering that in a later article - stay tuned.