Collectively, our recruiting model is broken. It is broken, for the sole reason that that it was built on the foundation of a single lie. The lie: It is difficult to find people.
Think about that for second. Let it sink in.
CEOs and their leadership teams have been funding recruiting efforts based on that lie. Countless companies have risen up to create an industry of services and products to serve recruiters in their mission to find what recruiters claim is hard to find. So much effort, capital, and opportunity wasted because of a lie.
Now there are some of you out there shaking your fist at me, calling me a fool, because you have X number of open positions you cannot fill, and you are a good recruiter, so the only plausible reason that they remain open is because you cannot find someone to fill it.
That is a lie. It could not be further from the truth.
Finding people is easy. That is not your issue. That is not anyone’s issue. However, it is the riddle our industry have been trying to solve for years, when all along the issue has never been finding someone, but has actually always been our ability to actually recruit someone.
That is exactly what recruiters really mean when they say to their leadership: “We just cannot find anyone for the role.” What they should be saying is “There are great folks out there who could do the job, add value and execute with excellence, but I cannot convince them to come work for us.” There are several reasons why the true statement may be the case, but lack of skilled people is just not one of them. As long as you have a job and at least one person is the right person for it, then it is our job, as recruiters, to recruit that person.
Clearly, almost everything we’ve been doing since “The War For Talent” was declared 17 years ago has been for naught, or we would not be living in the same damn stalemate today. I urge each of you to stop worrying about getting funds for another job board, search tool, or employment branding project, and instead fight to have those dollars allocated to core sales training and interview training for recruiters, or to address institutional issues so that you have the tools to compete for talent (compensation, benefits, relocation, etc.).
We must all commit to stopping the lie that it is hard to find talent and begin to confront the true causal issues we are up against.
Join me at the ERE Expo in September as I demonstrate how Spectrum Health has confronted these issues and transformed to a successful recruiting model based on core skills, metrics, efficiency, and effort alignment.
