Most recruiting leaders have had coffee-shop or happy-hour conversations with each other about “having a seat at the table” or being a “more strategic partner” to the business. There is no doubt these clichés are played out (and there’s a good chance you’re rolling your eyes at the thought of reading another article about this). The truth is, there are talent-acquisition departments that talk about having a seat at the table; heck, they might even lobby so hard to get to this “table” they get a pity invite.
But, for as many of those that are worrying about a “table” there’s the other side of the house: departments hard at work building teams that help their business use human capital to win in the marketplace.
This is no easy task. It’s a grind. But there’s great work going on in our industry right now by many talent-acquisition leaders showing a commitment to this approach. Some of those very leaders you’ll meet at ERE next week.
At CDW, we built a high-performing talent acquisition team by developing business- and HR-savvy recruiters.
Then, we aligned them to support a business, not a bunch of open requisitions. We make sure we have awesome technology and solid processes in place to be efficient. This allows us to get data, analyze trends, and present intelligence to hiring teams.
As leaders, we coach our recruiters to use their business IQ and recruiting smarts to help business leaders hire strategically to achieve business goals. We hold quarterly business reviews with our execs to make sure we’re on the right path with talent delivery and we openly share this feedback with our teams to make sure we’re continuously improving service to the business.
The CDW talent-acquisition leadership squad and I will be sharing our approach to supporting our business at in Chicago. We’re excited to have an open chat about how we built our department and developed our team to be business advisors, not req fillers.
We aren’t consultants. We aren’t bloggers. We aren’t industry speakers. We’re practitioners — the ones in the day-to-day grind. We’re going to share our story (both good and bad) and offer practical takeaways that both talent-acquisition leaders and recruiters can use in their own shops.
Last, but not least, one lucky attendee will win an iPad Mini. Yup, we’re doing a raffle … you should definitely come.
See you in Chi Town.