Advertisement
Most Recruiters Are Ignorant — Honest
Get articles like this
in your inbox
The longest running and most trusted source of information serving talent acquisition professionals.
Advertisement
Related Articles
Recruiting is a strange field. You can’t get a degree in it at any university, and that makes learning how to become a great recruiter a difficult task. Corporations also contribute to “recruiter ignorance.” Over 95% of all corporate recruiters are given their job without any required classroom training program in recruiting. To further compound the “learning” problem, the recruiting field itself is one of the fastest changing fields in HR. No matter what you learned initially, if you don’t constantly read and keep up with new tools you can be obsolete in as little as two years. How “Ignorant” Are They? In my work with corporations I get to meet with literally hundreds of recruiters each year. More often than not I am surprised by their lack of technical knowledge and how little they know about the available tools and strategies in recruiting. When I do a quick snapshot assessment of any corporate recruiter, I ask them three simple questions:
Most of the time I get no answer at all, just a blank look. Less than 10% of all recruiters know the answer to all three. At some companies, not a single recruiter knows the answers. It’s not that these recruiters don’t work hard. They do ó it’s just that because they learned everything on the job, they keep doing the same thing over and over without really knowing about other newly developed alternatives. But if recruiters are to become more than administrators, they absolutely must become “knowledge experts” in their field. Keeping Your Recruiting Function on the Leading Edge Since there is no formal accreditation offered specifically for recruiters, if you want to stay on the leading edge of what’s happening you have to accept a large dose of self responsibility. Great recruiters are no different than great doctors or mechanics. There are things all top professionals know about the tools and strategies that produce great results. Top professionals know what works, when it works, and why it works. They also stay up to date on the latest advances within their profession. If you’re a manager of a corporate recruiting function, the following are the steps you can take to keep your recruiting department on the leading edge:
Things Every Recruiter Should Know The following is a categorized list of what great recruiters should know (in descending order of importance): 1. Tools and information
2. Resources for continual learning
3. Metrics and building a business case
Conclusion If there is one fact that almost all experts agree on, it is that the world of business is shifting to a “knowledge economy.” In a knowledge economy, what you know (as opposed to your experience or physical strength) is the primary key to individual success. Unfortunately, in a knowledge economy, everything changes rapidly ó so fast, in fact, that what you know can become obsolete in as little as a month. Think about it: if you used the same recruiting tools and strategies in today’s “down economy” that you used even a year ago, you could easily embarrass yourself and your company. The only answer to this “knowledge obsolescence” dilemma is to dedicate yourself to the continuous process of staying on the leading edge of recruiting information. It’s time-consuming, but given the scarcity of good recruiting jobs these days, the alternative ó unemployment ó isn’t very appealing.