Insights from the recruitment floor
Kern and Monique write from the operator perspective — no generic agency thought-leadership, no invented stats. Just what we're actually seeing on the ground.
Hiring StrategyI got a brief last month that asked for 'as many CVs as possible by Friday.' Same week, a different client asked for three candidates I'd personally hire. The second took six hours and ended in an offer by Tuesday.
Kern Oakes
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SA MarketSenior people are leaving Johannesburg. Some are going overseas, but a lot more are going to Cape Town or up the Durban coast. The talent map has redrawn itself — and it's not finished yet.
Monique Oakes
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Future of WorkThe data from the UK, Iceland, Belgium and Portugal pilots is in. South Africa is 18 to 24 months behind the curve. The companies that have an answer in 2027 will pick from a meaningfully better talent pool.
Kern & Monique Oakes
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SA MarketI have sat in more than one meeting where someone in a mid-year review realised the scorecard was going to be a problem, and the room decided the answer was 'recruit more diversity, fast.' The scramble that followed was always worse than it needed to be.
Monique Oakes
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AI & RecruitmentWe get asked this twice a month. Here's the honest answer: AI will replace some recruiters. Specifically, the ones whose job was to be a search algorithm with a human face.
Kern & Monique Oakes
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Hiring StrategyMost of the companies I've worked with who say they want to do skills-based hiring lose the thread the moment they try to write the actual brief. Here's what it actually looks like when it's done.
Kern Oakes
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Candidate ExperienceSenior software engineer. Eleven years experience. Three offers by Friday, all within ten percent of each other. He took the lowest one. The SA tech hiring market has shifted further toward the candidate than most hiring managers have internalised.
Kern Oakes
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Candidate ExperienceThe moment the customer paid the deposit was the most dangerous moment of the entire transaction. We called it buyer's remorse. The exact same dynamic exists in recruitment — and most agencies don't work this window well.
Monique Oakes
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AI & RecruitmentWe ran an internal experiment: fifty real CVs from a senior operations role, run through five widely-used AI screening tools. We already knew which candidate the client had hired. The results were concerning.
Kern & Monique Oakes
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Future of WorkI've heard 'remote work killed our culture' three times this month from clients. I don't think that's what happened. The common factor isn't remote work — it's that they hired badly through 2021 and 2022.
Monique Oakes
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Hiring StrategyEveryone in South African engineering recruitment talks about the talent shortage. I want to push back on the framing. The shortage isn't supply. The shortage is the screening doing too much work upstream.
Kern Oakes
Read →Book a call with Kern or send us a brief. We'll tell you honestly whether we can help.
