Here are my thoughts as to why:

1. With the avg tenure of a Recruiting Pro being 12 – 18 months per gig, many are interested in short-term results, not long-term results (i.e. shareholder value creation). This is a reason I’d love to see TA Pros working contracts like athletes do. This way, the contract could be long enough to ensure focus on the right things . . . not just putting fires out. IT Pros working SAP or Oracle projects already do this – there are set deliverables and milestones in place . . . and then a spiff or contract bonus at the end of the contract period.

2. Competitiveness. If presenting to TA or HR, you could be seen as trying to replace or supplant their department. Certainly, this is not the case . . . and the only way I’ve seen this go over successfully is to take on a slate of roles and offer a significant discount from the average 25% fee. If there is economic justification (meaning short-term justification, such as reducing search fees), they’ll talk. But once you start talking long-term value creation, things start going over like a lead balloon. It is perceived as “sales-y”, and this is personally why I believe that there are firms out there succeeding with the following model:

Slate of Positions = Min of 5
Average Fee = 5% to 7% (depending on slate quantity and avg salary)
Up-Front Project ‘Co-Tainer’ = 25% of total project value

For example:

5 positions at an avg salary of $100k and avg fee of 7% = $7,000 per placement = $35,000 total project value

Up-front ‘Co-Tainer’ = 25% of total value project value = $8,750

You might ask why any Exec Recruiter in their right mind would fill 5 positions for the same receivable they could receive with about 1 and a half, and that would be a good question!

My guess is this: It’s easier to build a business valuation (and consequently sell your firm) through a recurring revenue model as opposed to a one-off pay-per-placement model. Competition is limited so you’re locking in a true partnership . . . but there are challenges as well.

Ok, back to work :)

Your concept of recruiter as evaluator is perfectly sound, so long as the conditions support whatever level of real expertise a recruiter has to offer about a given role, but also recognizing that there is a certain gulf between getting a job and working a job; what is valuable in one theater may not apply so much to the other. Recruiters may be inescapably biased toward the getting a job attributes….

Although most upgrades of departments or sales groups are not done in wholesale turnover. It would makes sense to me that if the department was struggling or sales were not where they should be or overall the company wanted to improve the quality and productivity that recruiters working as part of a management team could be very effective in evaluating the current contributors who were successful, why and the ones who were not , why and being part of the evaluation team to develop not just a hire to replace the lowest man on the totem pole or putting out fires with individual positions then run to put out another fire.

I am working on some things like that too John. Making some pitches now to clients. The other thing i think, here goes a giant debate, is that one has to be a generalist with some expertise in serveral verticles to make this concept work. Or come in with a team of several experts to pull it together.

While your idea of recruiters as business problem solvers no doubt has lots of good applications, I think that a large proportion of business challenges are not directly solvable (on a practical basis) by wholesale turn over of staff.

Getting recruiting out of HR would be the biggest step in ages to advance the role….

1. A lot of companies don’t know what recruiting really is so they put a bunch of young kids with no business experience in recruiting. Bright young kids, college educated but zero life experience. There is no way that they can interview a C level executive, a doctor, a scientist, an engineer, an Oracle architect or anybody much above a new grad or an admn with any credibility or know the difference between a good one and a bad one. And the killer is that they can’t do anything but deliver a stack or resumes to a hiring manager and do what a young recruiter has to do, drag their toe in the dirt and wait for the HM to tell them who to set up interviews with or whom to throw out with trash. They have no credibility to be able to discuss the people, the team fit, the evaluation of the candidate to help the hiring manager or any way assist the HM in making a good hire. It’s not their fault. They haven’t been around the block enough to be able to even think about the big picture and how it should be to hit the bottom line.

2. Because recruiters for the most part are lower paid, inexperienced and down the food chain in the reporting structure even the ones with some savvy and experience do not understand how to see the big picture and sell the HM on what he really needs. Not just sell a candidate because the candidate came across on the phone like good time Charlie personality boy. Or if they do, they live in fear of stepping over the line, risking their job or getting their hands slapped by an HM for venturing where they should not tred. All due i think to companies not hiring expereienced recruiters and paying them what good recruiters make in the exact role i have described..troubleshooters.

It’s always made me wonder why a company can see the value in the internal audit group SOX or financial, reporting to the board so they can be independent and make independent evaluations but when it comes to the people assets independence goes out the window due to job protection etc.

I doubt my pipedream will ever happen but i would sure like to see what would happen if somebody tried it. I would like to play on that team without risk of losing a client or losing a job just to see if i really am good enough to be an overall influencer who has the ability to impact improvement and the bottom line over a period of time. That would seem to take care of the debate about making recruiters accountable for retention and all that other raging disagreement.

I have had opportunities to come in as an outside consultant to build or rebuild a sales team, an accounting deaprtment, a whole company from the president down when the ex pres left and took the sales team, office team and everybody but one delivery guy and the pres and his son. It was wild, fun and it worked. One experienced recruiter can do it in a matter of weeks if they don’t have to worry about stepping on toes or losing their job.

Wonder why companies can’t see that? Is it money or fear of rocking the boat or the old “this is the way we have always done it”?

Further, the model you describe would lend to consultants coming in that don’t follow a lock-step, non-malleable process . . . but approach each problem with a blank slate and critical thinking skills. Sure, best practices are nice (and valuable in certain situations), but sometimes lend to a lack of innovation.

Your notion of ‘projects’ is one I’ve also endorsed for quite a while. Why? Because ‘projects’ are viewed in mutually exclusive fashion. Each would have its own financial metrics, such as IRR, etc. In addition, any investments (direct mail, social media, mixers, etc.) would be viewed exclusive to a given project at hand . . . and this would enable greater levity in when and where you could spend to see the project through to completion. Each investment would be tied to individual project results, not overall ‘reduction in CpH’, ‘reduction in TTF’, etc.

Marketing already does this. A new customer acquisition program is viewed in mutually exclusive fashion . . . just as the project regarding a “revamp of the sales team” could from a Recruiting perspective.

I’ve contended for quite a while that the way to earning a “voice at the table” (not just a “seat”) is through portfolio theory, or ‘project theory’ if you will. When you look at marketing or finance or recruiting from a portfolio perspective, the entire conversation changes (particularly with Executives who live portfolio theory and finance-speak).

Backfills and going forward new recruits fit the new more workable profile. Recruiting focus moves to the next area where improvement is needed. As recruiters (over the age of pick a number but focus on business experience not just gathering bodies to look like the bodies who came before)become a part of the trouble shooting team, they report to the CEO/COO where there may be able to point out problems with existing managers as opposed to line employees.

If any of that explains using a recruiting team as troubleshooting, problem solvers instead of “go find me three more”. How might that work in your opinion?

Steve certainly doesn’t need me to defend him, not by any means as he can handle himself. I will say, however, that I don’t think it was ever his intent to offend.

And if some of us are offended, the best question is “Why?” Bob, the truth is that most leaders in the HR Community will dump big-time $$$ into the “latest and greatest tools” (aka ’silver bullets that don’t quite ever seem to do what they’re marketed to do’), and they’ll pay $25k to $50k+ for a direct-hire placement (in addition to $100/hr+ for consulting services that may yield zero benefit), but they won’t spend a dime (or allocate a man-hour) to increase not only business acumen, but moreover, enhance relationships with the other business functions.

So I say we dust ourselves off, develop some thicker skin, have a group hug . . . and then get down to discussing what we really need to discuss. We need an intervention! Maybe this is a new business opportunity – we’ll call it ‘Recruiter Rehab’ :)

Ultimately, the topic here is something that has been discussed for quite a while. Frankly, it’s the focus of the Academic community (and yeah, I know that Academia driving progress such as this presents some issues of its own!) :)

At the end of the day, the point is this: * There has to be a better way. * And the truth be told, the ‘better way’ will come from a cross-functional effort (i.e. multiple business units collaborating), not the current silos (aka ‘machine-gun bunkers’) and coinciding groupthink-negativa we so often see today.

One of my cousins lives outside Toronto, the other outside Quebec; why wouldn’t I know certain Canadian foods?

As far as my statement, it isn’t pejorative at all; I certainly didn’t write it allthewhile wondering if Bob would think I was referring to him. I have a long history here on ERE discussing how much finance recruiters should know as well as discussing what they do know.

Since you were offended by my statement I’d like to know why.

Thanks Bob.

Steve you are sui generis. What a GREAT thread. It may not be as quant oriented as you would wish, but how can you beat “Having led corporate recruiting functions for mult billion dollar companies I can tell you this is a subject I have often considered” as validation for the concept ?

I personally think that recruiting belongs to Operations and should be part of the COO portfolio along with most development, forecasting, and succession activities. I think that much of what remains from ‘HR’ should belong to Corporate Governance and that “HR” should go away.

The digitization of the employee file and now more and more of the interaction between corporation and employee seems to sort of remove the need for much of the traditional seperate HR function…..

Steve, by what analytical method would you evaluate these kinds of organizational changes ? You would need model organizations actually doing it, with some state information available before, during, and after…..