Hiring Needs to Enter Its 'Seduction' Era, TA Leader Tells SHRM Talent
The News
Jim D'Amico, vice president of talent acquisition at Caliber Collision, told attendees at SHRM Talent 2026 in Dallas that the traditional attraction model of recruitment is no longer sufficient. 'Most TA organisations are set up for attraction,' D'Amico said. 'We're in a post-attraction world. We have to focus on seduction.' His argument rests on the observation that workers are staying put for security amid ongoing market uncertainty, meaning recruiters can no longer rely on job listings or employer brand alone to generate movement.
D'Amico was joined by Nicky Gibson, global director of talent strategy at Epsilon, who argued that many recruiters have 'gotten a little bit lazy' and need upskilling to use AI tools strategically. Craig Fisher of TalentNet Media cautioned against broad-brush AI training, urging leaders to focus on specific tools that will help teams immediately. D'Amico also made a provocative operational point: 'If any of you are recruiters, or have recruiters that do screens, stop it. Stop it right now. The machine can screen.' He argued recruiters should be freed for what he called 'diagnostic interviews' — conversations that uncover the candidate's real motivations and remove competing options.
Why It Matters
D'Amico's framing lands at a moment when 'job hugging' is the dominant candidate behaviour and most enterprise TA functions are still structured around volume — job post, screen, offer, hire. If the machine can handle screening (and the ASA data above confirms that AI is increasingly doing just that), then the recruiter's job becomes something fundamentally different: understanding what it would take to move a specific person at a specific moment. That requires different metrics, different training, and a different organisational structure. Most enterprise TA teams are not built for this yet.
Taking Action
All action is situated in your corporate context. These are starting points, not prescriptions — choose what fits.
Connect
Who to talk with in your enterprise
Your Head of Recruiter Training and Development — Audit whether your current recruiter training programme covers consultative, diagnostic interviewing skills or is still focused on behavioural interviewing and qualification checklists.
Your VP of Talent Acquisition — Discuss with your VP whether your team's KPIs reward conversation depth and conversion of passive candidates, or just speed-to-fill and application volume. If it's the latter, the structure is misaligned with the market.
Inspect
What to take a closer look at
Review your screening process: do human recruiters still conduct first-round screens that could be automated? Calculate the hours reclaimed by shifting those to AI and project what your team could do with that time. Specific tool to look at: Your ATS's screening module versus an AI screening tool like Eightfold AI Interviewer, HireVue, or Paradox Olivia — run a 30-day A/B test on one req family.
Reflect
What to think about more deeply
The most interesting question isn't 'Should we automate screening?' — it's 'If the machine screens and recruiters focus on seduction, how do you measure a recruiter's performance when their primary output is converting a passive candidate who wasn't looking, rather than processing applicants who were?'