Why We Need to Focus Recruiting Differently
In every organization, a handful of positions ultimately drive profits and success. These positions can be technical, sales, or even service-focused. They might be engineers who develop new products, top-performing salespersons, or customer care persons who retain customers. But when all the positions in a firm are examined with a focus on their contribution to profit, sales or customer happiness, more than 85% do not contribute directly to success.
Let’s agree that only a few jobs in a firm are critical to the organization’s success. We should prioritize and give those requisitions to the most capable, experienced, and skilled recruiters. Less critical positions can be given to less experienced recruiters or outsourced. While this may seem logical, it is rarely the case.
One of the key responsibilities of a recruitment leader is to align recruiters to the type of requisitions according to the recruiters’ level of expertise and experience, the value of the needed position, and the difficulty of finding and hiring people for that position.
How you answer these questions shows how effective a recruitment leader you are.
How do you assign requisitions?
What requisitions are your best recruiters working on?
How long does it take each recruiter to fill a position?
How do you measure a recruiter’s performance?
Which jobs are most critical to the success of your organization?
How hard/urgent is it to find people for these critical jobs?
These are the questions I would ask if I were to take over leading a recruiting function. Too often, I find requisitions assigned based on factors that have nothing to do with the skill or experience of a recruiter or how hard it is to find people for those positions. Usually, a recruiter is aligned to a function, for example, finance or engineering, and services any requisitions from that function regardless of whether they are experts in those areas. Other times the requisitions are assigned based on the availability of a recruiter rather than on skills or expertise.
For example, the diagram below shows how jobs might be classified by value to the organization and scarcity.
A while ago, the recruiting leader of a firm was asked to help build a team for cybersecurity. She worked with the hiring managers to create the chart below. This helped her decide which recruiters to assign different requisitions and estimated how long it would take to fill these positions. It was not an easy task to weigh these various job functions. All of them are important, but it was clear that the cybersecurity advisor was key to success which is why that position is placed high in the critical and urgent box. The consensus was that without the cybersecurity advisor, the other positions were not likely to be successful. She assigned this requisition to two of the most productive recruiters and asked them to work as a team to source for this position. With them and the hiring manager, she established a hire-by date tied to the recruiters’ bonuses.
The certified hacker was also a heavily debated position as people with those skills are hard to find, but not everyone thought it was a crucial position. Finding and hiring programmers and data scientists was far easier, so these were assigned to more junior recruiters. She decided to outsource the software engineer and project manager positions.
Exercises like this are challenging and controversial but valuable to clarify thinking, improve hiring managers’ understanding of the issues recruiters face, and assign the most qualified recruiter to each position.
Talent Intelligence
But no discussions or assignments can be successful without data about these skills and the people who have them. As our need for diverse talent grows, so does our outreach. It is important to gather all the data you can find about people with the skills you need, where they are located, who they work for, and their level of expertise. There are many potential data sources, but they need to be identified, prioritized and consolidated.
Many tools can help you, including the following: Reejig, Gloat, Seekout, LinkedIn Talent, Indeed, Eightfold, HireEZ, Entelo, the Talent Intelligence Group, especially for European talent, and several others,
Some of the talent you seek may be already in your organization but is not known. Some of the people you seek may be located remotely, and your organization may need different HR policies to tap into them. But it is important to understand how difficult it will be to find and hire the critical talent your organization needs and establish timelines and hire-by dates.
The only way to do that is to prioritize these requisitions and ensure that your most qualified recruiters are focused on that talent. It may be wise to have your entire team focus on the top few most critical openings, even if other positions are delayed.
Spreading resources across all positions, critical or not, regardless of their criticality, lowers the overall effectiveness of your function and does no service to the organization.
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