HR’s Dirty
Secret: You’re Destroying Your Own Workforce
Let’s stop pretending. HR personnel across the globe—but especially here in South Africa—are falling into the same trap. And it’s killing local industries, starving jobseekers, and slowly poisoning the very companies they claim to protect.
The dirty secret?
HR is trying to do recruitment themselves—or worse, outsourcing it to global “super companies” that don’t care about your people, your economy, or your future.
The Pitfall You Keep Falling Into
At Unique Personnel, we hear it every week:
“Why am I not getting interviews?”
Because HR is bypassing local recruiters to save a quick buck, to look like a hero in front of the CFO, or to tick a box with some fancy global AI platform that doesn’t even know your market, your culture, or your people.
But let’s be clear: Recruitment is not your core business.
When you pretend it is, you’re gambling with your company’s most expensive and irreplaceable asset: your people.
The Hypocrisy HR Won’t Admit
Here’s the part no one wants to say out loud:
South African HR departments refuse to use a recruiter if their BEE scorecard isn’t maxed out—yet the same HR teams happily throw millions into job portals and platforms owned by global corporations with ZERO BEE compliance and zero contribution to South Africa.
That makes them the biggest hypocrites in the country.
On one hand, they preach transformation. On the other, they’re exporting money, jobs, and intellectual property straight out of South Africa and into the pockets of Silicon Valley and foreign shareholders. Instead of empowering their own economy, they’re weakening it. Instead of supporting South African citizens and recruiters, they’re undermining them.
And all while patting themselves on the back for “compliance.”
The Numbers You Ignore (Until It’s Too Late)
- A wrong hire costs your business twice a recruitment fee.
- Replacing that wrong hire? Triple.
- Add the wasted time, the lost productivity, the culture damage, and the burnout in your HR team—and suddenly your “savings” look like reckless losses.
And what did you really save? A few Rands—while gutting your own industry and robbing your own people of opportunities.
What Real Recruitment Looks Like
At Unique Personnel, we don’t play games with people’s livelihoods. We only request payslips once our client is serious. We negotiate on behalf of candidates to secure the best salary and ensure there’s a genuine culture fit.
That’s not just recruitment. That’s protection—for both sides.
The Damage You’re Doing
By refusing to partner with local recruiters, HR is:
- Bleeding money into wrong hires that cost double or triple.
- Weakening local economies by sending recruitment fees, data, and IP offshore.
- Crushing jobseekers’ trust when they see their own HR departments siding with faceless AI instead of human expertise.
- Undermining themselves—because every bad hire becomes their mess to clean up.
- Exposing their hypocrisy by demanding BEE locally while throwing money at global companies that don’t contribute a single cent to South Africa’s transformation.
The Question You Can’t Avoid
If human resources are your company’s greatest asset, why are you treating recruitment like a DIY side hustle?
If you claim to support transformation, why are you funding companies with zero BEE?
The truth is, you don’t look like a hero for cutting recruiters out. You look like the author of a disaster waiting to happen—a disaster that will cost your company three times more in money, morale, and reputation.
Jobseekers know the answer already: “Go through my agent.”
The real question is: When will HR stop sabotaging themselves, betraying their own economy, and start acting like the guardians of people they claim to be?
Because until you do, the real expense you’re creating isn’t a line item in the budget.
It’s the slow, steady collapse of your company from the inside out.