This is the second article in a series (here’s part 1) on how to redefine recruitment. The author, a veteran recruiting leader within several global consulting firms, contends that the recruitment function at many organizations has become so specialized that recruiters have lost their all-important close connection to the business, which hurts their ability to create relationships both with internal customers (including hiring managers and the C-suite) as well as with external candidates they seek to hire. Below, he elaborates on the first of four recommendations on how to redefine recruitment by shedding an “order-taker” mentality.
Many of us in the recruitment profession who have been around the block more than a few times are sick and tired of hearing age-old complaints from colleagues such as “I am not appreciated,” “my clients don’t get recruiting,” and “I feel like an order taker.” Well, when you show up to a client meeting with pencil and paper in hand asking hiring managers, “Can I take your order,” then why should they expect anything more from you or treat you any differently!
Over the past 25 years, in both corporate talent acquisition as well as in consulting roles, I have mentored and coached recruiters to be avoid being order takers. In part, the order-taker mentality is rooted in recruiters’ own view of talent acquisition as a linear process where they receive a request to fill an open position, do a lot of activity to source people, and eventually all of this leads to a hire. But recruiting is so much more than that — it’s really a full circle of activities starting with strategic workforce planning and ending with onboarding and assimilation. To be effective in all aspects, recruiters need to be 100 percent immersed in the business and act as true business partners. So, it follows that recruiters stop acting like order takers and instead act as consultants to their organizations based on an agreed upon set of standards that defines the relationship in detail.
The single most important skill or behavior a recruiter can exhibit is that of a consultant. However, how often do we talk about, evaluate, measure, and manage recruiters against this trait? Never …
Too often, requirements for recruiters strictly focus on the following:
In contrast, consider the difference if the skills typically required of consultants were also applied to recruiters:
Let’s take this thinking a step further and consider what metrics we use to measure recruiters. Metrics common to recruiters include things such as time-to-fill, for example. But they are not job requirements, only measurements. That is why I advocate service level agreements.
A SLA is a contract between a service provider (either internal or external) and the end user that defines the level of service expected from the service provider and the actions the end user must take to ensure success. SLAs are output-based in that their purpose is specifically to define what the customer will receive and what the customer is expected to do and/or provide.
Recruiting is not the job of a single individual recruiter. To work well, it must be a team effort, which is why organizations claiming that talent acquisition “owns” recruiting are missing the mark. Likewise, hiring managers who delegate and relinquish their role in recruiting also fail their organization. So the notion of a SLA between the recruiter and hiring manager is very important to ensure each is doing their role and no one is abdicating their responsibilities.
Changing the mindset of recruiters, from that of order takers to consultants while setting up performance expectations based on an agreed upon set of SLAs are two ways that organizations can redefine recruitment. In the next article in this series, we’ll outline concrete ways in which recruiters can flex their consulting skills to add immeasurable value by focusing on what’s strategic, versus tactical.
