When everyone else Zigs, should you Zag?

This post first appeared on John’s Try Harder is Not a Strategy LinkedIn Newsletter. 

Product positioning experts have been teaching us about differentiation since the first person got their MBA. And certainly, within TA, we've been trying to differentiate (our very similar) EVP messaging, with (my opinion) very little real differentiation. Now, as we embrace AI - with all of its focus on efficiency - I wonder how many employers and TA leaders will choose to zag when others zig, by leveraging incredibly inefficient human recruiters and hiring managers as a way to 1) differentiate so that they can 2) access and hire better talent?

I recall a presentation from about 10 years ago where the speaker was highlighting all of these "they zagged when everyone else was zigging" examples from the consumer business world. Trader Joe's staying small with private label brands when everyone was going after 50,000 brand items in big stores. Or Hardee's/Carl's Jr unapologetically offering up 1,500 calorie "food for dudes" burgers while all other fast food chains were adding healthy salads and grilled chicken options to their menus. Or REI and Patagonia discouraging people from shopping Black Friday sales. Whether you call that Blue Ocean strategy or just radical differentiation doesn't matter. But now, as I see more and more companies invest in very similar AI-powered recruiting tech, I wonder if we - as TA leaders - are articulating and framing up the WHY for the areas where we might zag when others zig.

I wrote about this a couple years ago: Will AI Usher In a New Era of Inefficiency. My basic premise back in May 2024 was that we need to build and communicate a much more segmented talent acquisition strategy. I led a workshop on this at some recent head-of-TA events and will spend half a day on this at my June Recruiting Leadership Lab, as well.

The future of TA strategy will be much more segmented. Beyond segmenting hourly from executive from corporate. We'll align humans to roles at any level where we need more high-touch recruiting to get the quality and quantity of talent we need.

I predict we'll have a refined focus on:

1. High touch, low volume recruiting (with Talent Advisor and exec recruiting-like skilled recruiters)
2. Low touch, high volume recruiting (with mostly conversational AI doing the bulk of the work)
3. Hiring Manager self-service for many roles (with Talent Managers who own their pipelines, prioritization, funnel analysis, quality of org, and HM capability development).

You probably have started work on this. My challenge to you - and request - is that you make sure you're talking about your strategy for aligning humans and AI to the work to your own team, to your boss (CHRO), to finance, and to your internal HR tech and external HR tech partners. We're in a "lead or be led" moment right now. It's key we present a strategy that makes sense for the roles and candidate preferences of our target market and highlights where we need to zag (Human) when others may zig (AI). In fact, zagging - even if it's inefficient - may become the biggest advantage you have for your critical hires.

How are you segmenting your TA strategy now? Are you zagging?