Talent Acquisition: The Art of Intergenerational Mastery

Imagine a university inside a company. The HR Head is the Chancellor — the all-powerful boss with a fancy title and a talent for 'strategic nodding' in meetings. The Global Talent Acquisition Head is the Dean — always juggling hiring plans like a professor juggling overdue research papers. Then we’ve got the Professors Emeritus — those hiring legends who drop wisdom bombs starting with 'Back in my day…'. The Professors craft brilliant strategies that look great on slides, while the Assistant Professors hustle to turn those slides into reality. And let’s not forget the Teaching Assistants — the unsung heroes doing the real work, answering everyone's questions. But here’s the twist — this ‘university’ doesn’t just teach students; it trains the whole company on the art and science of hiring, making sure no one’s stuck in Recruitment 101.

Why this wild idea? Beacause...Once upon a time, hiring was an art form.

Not a pipeline. Not a process. Not a data-driven algorithm.

It was a craft, passed down from one generation of hiring masters to the next—like a secret family recipe… except instead of grandma’s spice blend, you got insider tips on how to spot a genius who could code their way out of a paper bag.

Back When Hiring Was Cool

Picture this: before AI took over job screenings—before robotic assessments, automated rejection emails, and LinkedIn InMails that scream "Dear [Insert Name],"—hiring was run by people.

Real people. With gut instincts. With eyebrows that raised when they saw a red flag. With coffee-stained notebooks full of notes like “brilliant, but talks too much about his cat.”

It wasn’t a process. It was a vibe.

And guess what? The best talent acquisition pros didn’t just wake up one day and decide they were great at it. No! They were mentored—like how a Carnatic musician doesn’t learn a raga from an app but from a teacher who sings it over and over until the very soul of the music sticks.

But somewhere along the way… we forgot this.

We replaced instinct with dashboards.  

We replaced conversation with screening tools.  

We replaced mentorship with AI.

And now?  

We wonder why candidates ghost us like a bad Tinder date.

Hiring Used to Be an Apprenticeship

Ask anyone who's been in tech hiring for 20+ years, and they'll tell you the same thing:

The old-school engineering leaders would personally review candidates by actually talking to people.

The VPs of Product didn’t rely on some checklist. They looked for passion and that spark of creativity.

Hiring was like training a Jedi. The recruiter was the Padawan, and the hiring master was the Obi-Wan, teaching them the ways of the Force… or at least how to spot a future star developer from a mile away.

There was an era in major tech hubs—when engineers, not software, drove the hiring process.  

- Senior engineers and architects would personally review candidates.  

- They didn’t send out mass emails. They handpicked people and invited them to conversations.  

- They didn’t rely on generic coding tests. They sat down with candidates and coded together.  

And guess what? They built teams full of legends.  

Why?  

Because they invested time.

They knew that hiring top talent isn’t about filtering—it’s about understanding.

And they passed that knowledge to the next generation of hiring professionals.  

The best recruiters in the industry today? They had engineering mentors. They sat with hiring managers who showed them what makes a great developer, a great marketer, a great product manager.  

They weren’t just told, “Here’s a job description—go find someone.”  

They were taught how to spot brilliance.

Now? New recruiters are handed:

- A LinkedIn Recruiter account (because spam always works, right?)  

- A set of email templates.  

- A resume scanner.  

- And a “best practices” guide.

And then we wonder why top talent isn’t lining up to work with us.

How to Fix It (Without Time-Traveling to 1999)

If we want to attract and retain the best, we need to stop acting like hiring is some kind of factory line.

Here’s the playbook:

1. Bring Back the Mentorship Model:  

   Junior recruiters need mentors, not machines. Pair them with senior hiring managers. Let them sit in on real interviews—not just read scripts.

2. Real Experts Hire Real Experts:  

   - Engineers should help hire engineers.  

   - Designers should help hire designers.  

   - Sales leaders should help hire salespeople.  

   AI can rank resumes, sure, but only humans know what “that special something” looks like.

3. AI = Assistant, Not Boss:  

   Let AI sort emails, fine. But hiring decisions? That’s human work.

4. Respect the Hiring Elders:  

   The old-school hiring masters may not know how to use TikTok, but they know how to build all-star teams. Find them. Learn from them. Pass their wisdom down.

Because at the end of the day, great candidates aren’t just looking for a job.They want to be seen. They want to know the person hiring them actually gets how brilliant they are.