Pillar three · The recruiter experience

Recruiter Enablement and AI training

The recruiter isn't disappearing. The operating model around the recruiter is.

Enablement gets your recruiters out of the weeds and back on the work they're best at, advising candidates and hiring managers and doing the human part of hiring that no agent does well.

A recruiter's week, 40 hours, illustrative

TodayAfter the redesignAdvising candidates and managersAdvisingSourcingInterviewsToil: admin, ATS updates,checking AI output
The problem

Adoption went up and so did burnout. Nobody redesigned the week.

Most teams I meet got the new tools with a webinar and a login, and then went back to doing the job the old way plus the new way on top of it. That tells you the training was never the problem.

Discovery

It starts with a real week of work

Every program opens with a one to two week discovery, inside the program, not on a separate invoice. I map a real week of your team's work by task type and spend a half day shadowing two recruiters through a normal workload. I see the tools the way a recruiter sees them, not the way an admin does.

Recruiter AI Fluency Self-Assessment

Each recruiter scores how they use AI across 12 everyday recruiting tasks. It shows me who's ready to build, who needs the basics, and where the team is quietly avoiding a tool for a good reason.

What the discovery hands back

  • A map of a recruiter's week. Where the time really goes.
  • The toil list. Tasks ranked by hours and frustration.
  • The enablement action plan. What to automate, what to stop doing and what to teach, on your current tools.
  • An upskilling path by role. Who learns what, in what order.

Then the program itself

Programs usually run four to eight weeks, discovery included, shaped by what the discovery found.

Discovery1 to 2 weeks
Labs and playbookson your own reqs
Coaching and office hoursuntil it sticks

Hands-on labs

Recruiters build real workflows in the tools you already pay for, on their own reqs.

Playbooks for your stack

Written for your ATS and your AI tools, not a generic deck.

One-on-one coaching for leads

For the recruiting leads who'll keep the new workflows running.

Office hours

For the questions that only show up in week three.

Enablement is also the natural last phase of the other two pillars. When a Recruiting Operations or Employer Brand redesign needs your team to work differently, this is how they learn to.

For TA leaders

Mentorship for TA leaders

Running talent acquisition is a lonely job right now. The function is getting bigger, the budget isn't, and most of the people who'd understand the problem work at your competitors.

Mentorship is one-on-one for heads of TA, TA ops leaders and people stepping into either role. We work on whatever is in front of you, from a reorg or a board-level headcount conversation to your first AI governance policy or what the next job should be.

Reorgs and headcount

The board conversation, the plan behind it.

AI governance

Your first policy, written for how your team works.

The next role

What to look for and what to ask.

A sounding board

Someone who has run the function in-house.

Who I send work to

Some of what teams need isn't work I do, like contract recruiting, RPO, or content and video production. When that's the case I'll refer you to partners I trust and tell you why I picked them. Some partners pay me a referral fee, and I'll tell you which ones before you talk to them.

Start with the discovery

Thirty minutes to talk through your team and whether enablement is the right first move.

Book an intro

Questions about Recruiter Enablement

What is Recruiter Enablement at Proactive Talent?
Recruiter Enablement is Proactive Talent's program for training recruiting teams on AI tools and new ways of working. Led by Matt Staney, it combines hands-on labs, playbooks written for the client's own stack, one-on-one coaching for recruiting leads and office hours.
How does the enablement discovery work?
Every program starts with a one to two week discovery included in the program. Matt Staney maps a real week of recruiter work, shadows recruiters for a half day, and uses the Recruiter AI Fluency Self-Assessment to build an enablement action plan and an upskilling path by role.
What is the Recruiter AI Fluency Self-Assessment?
It is a self-assessment Proactive Talent uses in the enablement discovery. It scores how a recruiter uses AI across 12 everyday recruiting tasks, so training starts where each person actually is.
How long does an enablement program take?
Programs usually run four to eight weeks, including the one to two week discovery.
Do recruiters need new tools for this?
No. Proactive Talent builds the labs and playbooks on the ATS and AI tools a team already has.
Does Matt Staney offer mentorship for talent acquisition leaders?
Yes. Matt Staney offers one-on-one mentorship for heads of talent acquisition and TA operations leaders through Proactive Talent. Intro calls are booked at calendly.com/mattstaney/pt-mentor.