Recruiting is broken because it burned trust. Learn why trust is the true currency of modern recruiting — and the foundation for the next generation of tools.
Recruiting isn’t broken because of bad tools. It’s broken because we’ve burned trust. And rebuilding that trust is the only way forward.
The system we inherited
Look at the tools recruiters rely on today. LinkedIn. Job boards. AI sourcing platforms. All of them orbit around the same artifact: the CV. A static snapshot of the past, filled out by candidates themselves, buried in outdated databases.
Recruiters try to work with that data, but it’s a losing game. They’re forced into guesswork, high-volume outreach, and inboxes full of spam. Developers tune it out, and the cycle continues.
This isn’t a tech problem. It’s a trust problem. Candidates don’t believe recruiters will respect their time, their aspirations, or their inbox.
And if candidates don’t trust you, all the Boolean strings and AI assistants in the world won’t save you.
The coming collapse of cold access
The outbound model - blasting strangers and hoping someone replies - is dying. Developers ignore it. Response rates are in freefall. And AI is making it worse by flooding both sides with noise: automated outreach on one end, AI-generated résumés on the other.
Cold access is collapsing under its own weight. The future of recruiting won’t be decided by who can scrape the most profiles or send the most messages. It’ll be decided by who earns attention in a world where attention is scarce.
Why trust is the new infrastructure
Here’s the thesis: trust is the only sustainable currency in recruiting.
Recruiters who respect candidates, who tell the truth upfront, who cut the hoops and deliver clarity - those recruiters win. Not just once, but over and over, because candidates come back to them.
Platforms that protect trust - by design, not by accident - will outlast the spam machines. Developers already show us this at daily.dev. They engage with content and community daily because it feels like their space, not a marketplace. They stick around because we don’t exploit their attention.
That’s the infrastructure the next generation of recruiting needs. Not another job board. Not another email finder. But a system built on respect, signal, and mutual intent.
Where we’re heading
At daily.dev, we’re building toward that vision. A world where recruiters don’t have to gamble on outdated CVs or cold outreach. Where developers stay in control, and introductions happen only when both sides say yes.
Recruiting will always be hard. But it doesn’t have to be broken. If we rebuild it around trust, it can work - for recruiters, for developers, and for the companies desperate to hire them.
Trust isn’t the “soft” side of recruiting. It’s the moat. It’s the currency. And it’s the future.
