One of the biggest problems facing directors of corporate recruiting these days isn’t the shortage of applicants, but rather the shortage of great recruiters. Magnifying the impact of the problem is the fact that only a handful of recruiting directors have taken the time to write a strategy or develop an approach that would improve their chances of hiring the best recruiters. In fact, the majority of the approaches that I have seen are so unstructured that they would be laughed at if they were used to recruit an engineer or an accountant. If you’re ready to hear about and try some new ideas and outside the box approaches, read on.
The Problem Is Here Today
Although many experts are talking about a shortage of talent that will hit in 2006, in many regions and industries the shortage is already occurring. Job posting sites that target recruiters, like ERE’s job board, have seen a marked increase in the number of job postings recently, many of which remain unfilled for long periods indicating a shortage. Some directors of recruiting expect to “rehire” the throngs of recruiters that were laid-off following the collapse of the dot-com bubble and the recessionary gap that followed, but little has been done to figure out if that workforce will return. There is no doubt that the demand for recruiters that occurred during the war for talent in the late ’90s brought record numbers of new entrants into the field. It seemed back then that almost anyone with experience or even interest in recruiting was in high demand. Unfortunately, when the boom ended and entire recruiting departments were eliminated, so too did a lot of interest in the role. The feast-to-famine cycle occurred so quickly that it left a lasting impression on every recruiting professional. The inability to get a job for a three-to-four-year period encouraged many recruiters to pursue alternate professions, including a number of professions less subject to cyclical demand.
Many of these “former recruiters” consider a return to this cycle that offers them no real job security a distant possibility. Were former recruiters to return to their desks, many companies would find that the skill sets they possess were developed when the business world, and thus the recruiting world, had not yet become truly global. As a result, most former recruiters just don’t have the skills and experience that is required to recruit and retain talent around the world. The tools and techniques they once mastered, while designed to recruit volume, could not begin to keep pace with today’s practices that have seen dramatic increases in Internet recruiting, the growth of referral networking, metrics, outsourcing and ATS technology. Related to this issue — and further compounding the recruiter skill shortage — is the fact that tight budgets have meant that few current recruiters have received any kind of formal recruiter training in the last three years. Corporate recruiting departments will not be the only ones that will have difficulty in recruiting recruiters. In addition, agencies and outsourcing firms that offer contract recruiting services will battle for what recruiting talent does exist. As a result, those corporate recruiting managers that expected to rely heavily on outsourcing may be disappointed. In fact, some vendors are already unable to accept new clients because they also lack the recruiting manpower. Many companies admit that those vendors who are accepting new assignments are delivering lower quality service because they are having difficulty recruiting and retaining even average recruiters.
Great Recruiters Are Different
The most crucial step in developing a world-class corporate recruiting function is to attract and retain top recruiters. Before you begin looking for recruiters, it’s important to realize that great recruiters are not in the same league as average recruiters. If you use the wrong “finding tools,” you almost guarantee that you will only get “average” recruiters as applicants.
As Chris Forman, the CEO of AIRS, so aptly put it, “A great recruiter is worth a thousand times more than an average recruiter.” I certainly agree with this assessment. For example, in one top firm, I calculated the impact on revenue of a single world-class recruiting professional to be over $20 million. In contrast, a poor recruiter can actually reduce your revenue by hurting your brand and either “missing” or scaring away top performers. The very best that you want to target are “aggressive” recruiters with excellent research and selling skills. I call them “warrior” recruiters. It’s important to realize that if you search for great recruiters using only the typical keyword search criteria, like the number of years’ experience in recruiting, you are dooming your process from the very beginning. You should also remember that many people who were or can be excellent recruiters are not currently in the recruiting field, so you might need to look outside of recruiting in order to find them. It takes a very special set of skills (or competencies) to be a great recruiter, and if your search utilizes the wrong tools and screening processes, you will be easily and frequently fooled. To recruit great recruiters, you need a strategy and a written plan to identify and sell the very best. The foundation of any successful strategy is determining at the very beginning whether you’re looking for active or passive candidates. Although great recruiters are certainly not “passive” individuals, they are very much like the so-called “passive” candidates that they are paid to seek out as recruiters, in that that the very best recruiters do not actively post their resumes on large job boards. In addition, while many read newspaper ads and attend job fairs as part of their job, they don’t use those tools directly to find their own next job. And yes (for those unemployed recruiters out there), I am saying that if a recruiter applies for a vacancy and is easy to find and sell, the odds of them being a great recruiter are so small that they probably aren’t worth the trouble.
Great recruiters are just like great salespeople, seven-foot centers, and great CEOs: If you want a great one, expect to have to poach them away from numerous other great opportunities. If you believe, as many do, that having great recruiters is as important as selecting a recruiting strategy, then it is critical that you use the most effective process for finding them when you do have the rare added headcount to hire for a recruiter position. There are three categories of approaches for recruiting great recruiters. They include:
If you want to hire the very best “warrior” recruiters, here are some approaches and tools to consider. A
Toolkit for Recruiting Recruiters Obviously no firm uses every one of these tools and techniques, so the key is to scan through them and pick the ones that best fit your culture, your timeframe, and your budget. Some approaches may be too aggressive for you, but read on, there are also conservative approaches included in the toolkit. (Note: The highest impact tools and approaches are generally listed first).
Referrals from recruiters, employees and others. Referrals are almost always the best source for top performers and that remains true in recruiting where the very best are highly visible.
Recruiting-related events
When you are looking for professionals, events are routinely the second best source for high quality recruits. This is true because professionals attend association events and seminars on a regular basis. It’s also true that companies send their very best people to these events while the mediocre stay at home. Another advantage of recruiting at non-recruiting events is that most people are off guard, and invariably the room will be filled with employed people and not active job seekers. Of course you have to use a subtle approach at some events (so as not to offend the event organizers), but event recruiting is still the number two best way to find great recruiters. Start your search by asking, “Where do recruiters all gather in one room?” Also check with corporate travel to see which events recruiters routinely attend. Some event-related ideas:
Next week, in Part 2, we will focus on poaching and using Internet sources.
