The Biggest Misconception in the C-Suite: Recruiting Is Leadership
Too many leaders treat recruiting like plumbing: something they only notice when it’s broken.
“We’re not getting enough inbound.”
“Why’s it taking so long to fill this role?”
“Why aren’t we seeing better candidates?”
Translation? “I outsourced the most important function of my job and now I’m confused why we suck.”
Let’s call it what it is: dereliction of duty.
If you're a CEO, founder, or department head, guess what? You're not just steering the ship — you're hiring the crew. You're the Chief Talent Officer. Not by title, but by obligation. If that makes you uncomfortable, maybe you're not a leader — maybe you're just the person with the calendar full of strategy meetings that go nowhere.
Recruiting Is Not HR’s Job — It’s Yours
Most executives treat recruiting like a task you hand off. Like dry cleaning. You send it out and expect it back fresh, folded, and ready to wear. But talent doesn’t work that way. People aren’t shirts. They’re rocket fuel or dead weight. And unless you’re intimately involved in choosing who joins, you’re gambling the culture, velocity, and sustainability of your business on someone else’s taste.
Let me put it bluntly: the most enduring advantage your company has is talent. Not code. Not product. Not pricing. Those can all be copied, undercut, or out-executed. Talent is your moat.
You think Larry and Sergey delegated hiring at Google in the early years? You think Reed Hastings wasn’t personally vetting hires in Netflix’s growth phase? When Steve Jobs came back to Apple, he didn’t fix the product first — he fixed the people.
Your company becomes the people you hire. Full stop.
Inbound Isn’t a Strategy, It’s a Crutch
“We’re not getting great inbound.”
You know what that sounds like? A football coach complaining that no one good walked onto the field uninvited.
If you’re relying on inbound, you’ve already lost. The best talent isn’t looking. They’re building. They’re head-down solving hard problems. They’re locked into missions, not job boards. You want that talent? You’ve got to go hunt. And if you think that’s below you, you're confusing leadership with luxury.
Recruiting isn’t a support function. It’s a growth lever.
The best leaders build recruiting engines. They don’t wait for “people ops” to build a pipeline — they’re the damn pipeline. They talk to top candidates over lunch, on walks, in Slack DMs. They never stop. They’re talent hoarders. Not in a creepy way. In a way that signals: this is what matters.
Hiring Is Strategy in Action
Every company has strategy decks. Slide after slide of big words. Synergy. Differentiation. Operational excellence. But let me tell you something: strategy lives and dies in who you hire.
You say you're a “data-driven company”? Cool — why did you just hire that director based on how well he “vibed” in the interview?
You say culture is your edge? Great — then why is that new VP terrorizing her team while you look the other way?
The delta between your company’s vision and its reality is filled — or drained — by your hires.
And the worst part? You usually don’t notice bad hires until it’s too late. Not because they’re incompetent, but because they’re just off enough to slowly degrade everything. Like a virus that doesn’t kill the host — it just makes the host slower. More political. Less bold. More afraid of risk. Less willing to dissent. Sound familiar?
That’s not bad luck. That’s bad hiring. That’s you.
“But I’m Too Busy!”
Yes. Of course you are. You’re running a business. You’re raising capital. You’re putting out fires. You’re managing up, down, and sideways. You’ve got 14 things demanding your attention before breakfast. But here’s the inconvenient truth: the one thing that will determine whether those 14 things go well is whether you have the right people in place.
If you're too busy to recruit, you're too busy to scale.
Because when you don’t make time to recruit, you make time to fix bad hires.
You do re-orgs. You deal with culture rot. You pick up the slack when your VP flakes. You explain to investors why the roadmap is late — again.
Recruiting is the highest ROI use of your time. Period. Not fundraising. Not product. Not press. Talent.
The problem is, recruiting doesn’t pay off tomorrow. It pays off in six months when your new hire knocks a Q3 launch out of the park. Or in nine months when your next hire launches a product that gets you acquired. It’s a delayed return — but a massive one. Most execs are too impatient, too addicted to immediacy, to invest in it properly.
You’re Not Building a Team — You’re Building a Reputation
Every offer you make says something about what you value.
When you lowball that candidate, it says you value thrift over excellence.
When you ignore feedback from your hiring manager, it says you value hierarchy over trust.
When you skip reference checks, it says you value speed over diligence.
And when you make a great hire — someone who raises the bar, lifts others, and reflects your values — it becomes your reputation.
Talent talks. People know who gets hired, who gets promoted, and who gets protected. That becomes your employer brand, whether you like it or not.
Your brand is not your logo. It’s not your mission statement. It’s who people become when they work for you.
Are they empowered? Or are they walking on eggshells?
Are they challenged? Or are they quietly disengaging?
Are they building something they believe in? Or are they shopping for their next job in the bathroom between meetings?
The Call to Arms: Act Like a CTO (Chief Talent Officer)
So what does it mean to treat recruiting like leadership?
You meet every final-round candidate personally.
You recruit when you don’t have an open headcount, because talent doesn’t wait for budget cycles.
You keep a list of five people you’d hire in a heartbeat and talk to them quarterly.
You ask your team, “Who are the smartest people you’ve ever worked with, and how do we hire them?”
You hold your execs accountable for hiring. Not just filling seats. Raising the bar.
You obsess over onboarding because a bad first 30 days wastes a great hire.
You fire fast when you get it wrong.
This isn’t extra credit. It’s the job.
If you don’t believe me, look at the companies that outlast everyone. They don’t just have great products. They have great people — and leaders who made it their mission to find, nurture, and protect that talent.
The best leaders are recruiters. They don’t whine about the pipeline. They are the pipeline.
Final Thought
You wouldn’t outsource your product roadmap. Or your investor pitch. Or your strategic vision.
So why the hell would you outsource your team?
Stop treating recruiting like plumbing. Start treating it like the foundation. Because if the people suck, the business will eventually follow.
Talent is the only sustainable edge. Own it.
Or someone else will.