Grantas Žardeckis

Grantas ŽardeckisSep 29, 2026

"Silence creates stories." That line stuck with me from last week's IHR - In-house Recruitment Live London, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since. I spent the day across 9 sessions covering AI in recruitment, candidate experience, assessments, employer brand, and the future of TA as a career. Plus a few hours talking to ATS, automation, and assessment providers on the floor. A few things that stood out: On candidate experience: For recruiters, the process is a series of steps. For candidates, it's one continuous journey. Every interaction, a slow response, a warm email, a moment of clarity or confusion, shapes how they experience us and the company. On AI: As AI-generated CVs become the norm, the signal value of a CV drops. The question shifts from: what does this person present? to what can this person actually do? On TA as a profession: The most useful question to ask regularly: What is my skill set, and what does the business need? The gap between those two answers is where growth happens. Came back with a notebook full of ideas for work, for how we run our process at Baltic Assist, and for future content here. A big thank you to IHR - In-house Recruitment for putting together a genuinely valuable day, and to Baltic Assist for making the trip possible. Grateful for both. More on that soon. #LiveLDN2026

Grantas ŽardeckisAug 21, 2026

Not all ghosting is equal. But some of it is unacceptable. After a CV drops into the inbox, silence is common. Frustrating, yes. But when hundreds of applications come in for one role, not every rejection gets a personal message. That's a systems problem, not necessarily a values problem. But after an interview? That's a different story. Someone took time off work to prepare. They researched the company. They showed up, answered your questions, maybe completed a test or a task. They followed up politely and heard nothing back. That's not a capacity issue. That's a choice. I've seen this happen to candidates I was working with. The company goes quiet. Days turn into weeks. The candidate, who was genuinely excited about the role, is left wondering whether they said something wrong or simply weren't worth a two-line email. The answer is usually neither. It seems someone wanted to make the call. And that tells you something. Not every employer who ghosts is intentionally disrespectful. Hiring managers get busy. Decisions get delayed. The rejection email keeps getting pushed down the list. But the pattern, when it's consistent, reflects how that organisation values people's time, and by extension, how it treats people on the inside too. Candidate experience is a preview of employee experience. If a company can't send a rejection, ask yourself what else they struggle to communicate.

Grantas ŽardeckisOct 14, 2026

For recruiters, it’s a series of steps. For candidates, it’s one continuous journey. I heard this recently at a conference (at Ben Williams session at IHR London Live), and I haven’t been able to shake it. When we think about recruitment, we think in stages: sourcing, screening, interview, offer, onboarding. Clean, separate, manageable. But the candidate doesn’t experience it that way. From the moment they see the job post to the moment they start (or don’t), it’s one long, uninterrupted impression of you and the company. Which means every touchpoint matters more than we often treat it as. The slow response. The unclear next step. The interviewer who seemed distracted. The silence after the final round. None of these feel significant in isolation. Together, they tell a story. The good news: so does warmth, clarity, and a recruiter who actually seems interested in the person on the other side.