Couple your observations with the malady we’ve coined ‘reqitis’ and is any wonder that recruiters will ever get out from under the heavy (but necessary) administrative burden imposed by internal processes. In fact, this is so common in corporations in another article I’ve suggested that the role ‘recruiter’ be clearly distinguished from ‘employment administration’ — a title that more correctly describes 75% of the work of many corporate recruiters.

But, that administrative work must be handled. In most circumstances, burdened with headcount and budget constraints, corporate recruiting organizations have had to pile it on to the job description of a full life cycle recruiter. And what becomes even more paralyzing is that many in these roles become consumed by those tasks and spend even less time actually recruiting candidates for their companies.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard comments like ‘Oh, I can enter applicants into our ATS’, or ‘Oh, I can search that database!’ … followed up by, ‘Oh, I didn’t have time to call that candidate to get him/her interested in (i.e. recruit for) our opening,’ or ‘I’m busy busy busy!’

YIKES!

I wonder if the same company’s sales people are burdened with end-to-end responsibilities. Can you just imagine a widget sales person with responsibilities in design, engineering, manufacturing, packaging and distribution ?!? Now that’s a full-life-cycle sales role that candidates would clamor to hold!

I wonder who will be reading your article and actually thinking about how to apply the logic and effect change for what some of us see as good basic business sense!

The situation is the same, following David’s note about mapping what the process is – the process for handling a retail department is well known, yet a computer is responsible for assigning people to schedules. Among team members, we know who is better at certain tasks and when our optimal time is for working (day or night). Yet, we are thrown into suboptimal situations at the mercy of a computer that cares only about time/cost optimatization and managers who dont take time to understand staff’s strengths.

How much different and how much better our department(s) would be run if the right people were doing the right things at the right time! Whether it is a retail store at the holidays or a recruiting department….the gist is still the same.

I will also add that it is unfortunate that ‘Mary’ had to speak to a colleague and didn’t consult with her team to identify ways to improve the department. I wonder if some of her team members had said something? That is just another issue for another day….