Your article was very well written and I couldn’t agree with you more on every one of your points. However, there are a few points I think you should include.

1.) Top candidates want to work for top companies. The most successful organizations from from the perspective of profitability also tend to be the most successful recruiting organizations especially for mid-senior level positions. Why? There are many reasons but chief among them is the power of the employer brand and the strategic ability of the recruiting organization to communicate the brand ‘personality’ to prospective candidates. Anyone involved with recruiting for the organization should be schooled by the resident marketing staff on public facing brand atrributes.

2.)After the recruiting staff has been educated on how to create and communicate an employer brand, an effort should be made to educate them of the importance of marketing the organization as an employer of choice to the target audience through media seen as credible by the target audience. Media selection and messaging composition is critical to educating prospective candidates of the benefits of working for a given organization. A poorly written and positioned ad in the wrong media will always leave the recruiter with a bad taste for media so hiring managers should be required to work directly with professional media to make sure they are reaching the correct audience.

3.) Hiring managers have grown accustomed to hiring outside headhunters for their every need. Why would anyone turn over the critical responsibility of supplying the organization with it’s life-blood - qualified hires - to someone with no real vested interest in the long term success of the organization? High price recruiting fees should be reserved as a last option as opposed to the first.

In short, most hiring managers and recruiters are under educated on the importance of employment marketing to the target audience. Employment marketing should be a basic part of the recruiting organization’s recruiting arsenal. No, advertising is not the magic bullet solution to all recruiting needs, but it is a critical element in the success or failure of many recruiting campaigns.

Let them have partnerships with other dept/ out side agencies if req…but for his dept, hiring manager should act with P& L responsibility.

Accessing common resources like job boards should be treated the way we treat other shareable resources like conference rooms,printers etc

Recruiting and talent manageement will become a part of Project Managemeent.

As long as they outsource to ‘others’ recruiting will not have respect….verbalising the tacit ‘I got it Outsourced hence it is a noncore aspect of our business’.

Recruiters !!! realise it before you become redundant. what ever common sense you learnt in the name of ‘Hiring Science’, graduate your skills to become an executive search specialist or booooooom !!!

Regards
ISM

Talent is the key to selecting good employees but too few writers share their method for measuring talent. If we don’t measure talent, we can’t hire for talent.

Measuring talent is easy to do and very effective for identifying future successful employees but seldom is it free. If it were free, everyone would be measuring talent.

How much is a good hire worth?

How much does a bad hire cost?

How much are you willing to spend to ensure that all new employees are good hires?

How much are you willing to spend to ensure that no new hires are bad hires?

If you know the cost a bad hire, you’ll know how much you should invest to avoid a bad hire.

By the way, the cost of a bad hire far exceeds the cost to avoid a bad hire.

Point number 6 is an interesting one. Whilst I agree with the first part and have said so many times on ERE, there will I’m sure be some Corporate Recruiters that disagree.

As for the second part of point 6, well the problem is this. A TPR is a sales job. A Corporate Recruiting function is not. It doesn’t matter how you try to disguise it or try to sell the concept.

A good sales professional would not follow this route if they wanted to stay in sales and as already stated in the same point, the pay might just be a problem. So what do you get? A failed sales person? Great. Back to where you started.

I’m sure there are some very succesful corporate recruiting teams out there but the answer to a failed internal model is simple. Use a good TPR.

Think of the money you could save in overheads, staff training, implementing an expensive system, replacing the poor performers and so on.

If the TPRs don’t perform, find another. Let HR do their job, let the hiring managers do their job and let the TPRs find the people.

Life is simple if you want it to be. In this artificial war for talent, if the internal model is failing, why not use the best resource available to you? According to point 5, cost is no longer an issue.

Wasn’t it once called outsourcing? I wonder if it will catch on.

Things to consider;

1) you mention in ATS ‘then validate the process before you automate’ process need to be defined, validated, approved, bought into before ATS is changed. The ATS you have in place might do what you need to if you use it properly

2) Maximize technology. Once your have your process well defined use technology to improve it. Get your IT department or hire a consultant to see where you can apply technology to save time and reduce cost. You’ll be surprised by some of the simple things you can do.

3) training, training, training. Make sure to have training plans, certifications, and internal process/ATS training to improve your recruiters skill sets.

‘HR is a support department, not a sales or line function, so reporting to the CEO is a better fit.’

I say let HR be HR right where it is now (many of its ’services’ are being outsource as we speak)..and create a seprate group…say a Talent Management Office…that is charged with not only recruiting new talent but also talent retention. And lets even say someone at the C Level at the company owns it. I’m sure this exists now in a few places…just not in enough places.

Much like a Project Management Office that offers project managers, systems and business analysts to ‘line managers.’ A TMO, Talent Management Office, could offer specialized recruiters (who could even work on commision)to line managers. If those ’specialized recruiters’ are not available or are not qualified…the line manager can go external.

Lou…I’ve met you a couple times now…you could never work in an HR Department. But…you could run a kick a** TMO.