Championing the underdog
Posted by Mitch on 13th March 2016
A year or so ago I saw an internal recruiter from Hewlett Packard bragging on LinkedIn about how successful he and his team had been in filling open job requisitions. He even provided stats.
Amid all the back-slapping and sycophancy – much of it from other inhouse recruiters and, depressingly, some of it from agency recruiters hoping to be fed a few scraps from the HP banquet table – I turned-up and suggested that he’d omitted to mention the biggest contributing factor to his success.
That the company with those job vacancies was called Hewlett Packard.
He confirmed his douchebaggery by deleting my comment.
I’ve seen other blogs and discussions in recent years where some of our recruiting peers were singled-out for special praise. In one case they were being cited as the world’s “super recruiters”. Some even had league tables.
And guess what? Those “super recruiters” were all inhouse recruiters working for companies like SAP, Pepsico and Facebook.
People seem to love to create hierarchies. And lists. What is that all about?
As I’ve said before, recruitment is a line of work that attempts to fill a rational process with irrational participants – so much so that it can make occasional fools of even the most capable of practitioners.
Most recruiters are sometimes great and sometimes not so great, depending on circumstances and luck.
Look, what I’m really trying to say here is that there’s no such thing as super recruiters.
What all of those people who were being cited as super recruiters had in common was that they worked for super companies. And by super, I mean big and well-known, not big and really nice. Like a really large corporate could ever be described as nice.
As an aside, there seems to be an increasing fetishisation of the inhouse recruitment sector, which if I’m honest, I find a little creepy. Anyway..
I think the real test of a recruiter’s ability is probably how effective they are at filling jobs for employers that aren’t super.
Employers that most people have never heard of.
Employers that don’t have the luxury of an omnipresent corporate brand.
Employers whose recruiters have to do a bit more than merely mention the company name to get a prospective candidate to listen to them.
For my money, the real recruitment heroes are those who can (and do) consistently fill jobs for those companies that are small, that are unglamorous and are unheard of.
Those recruiters who do it under the ultimate pressure of having to fill those jobs, either because they’re inhouse or a retained external supplier.
If you’re one of those recruiters, you have my total respect.
Comments
By Ionut Roghina on Tuesday, 15 March 2016Completely agree Mitch. I was actually speaking to Kasia recently on this topic, my opinion is that working in recruitment for such an organisation would not be as challenging as representing less known companies.
By Mark Pearce on Wednesday, 16 March 2016
A very interesting but very relevant blog post Mitch. I’ve said the same thing for a while now. We work with a few “big names” in the industry. Our consultants have said for a long time that the big names sell themselves and there’s little effort or skill that goes into presenting the job opportunity. The real buzz is working with some of the SME’s or start-ups and positioning them in such a way that they’re just as attractive and then introducing a high-calibre individual to them. That’s where the real skill lies and where the real buzz comes from - in my opinion.
By Janelle henry on Wednesday, 16 March 2016
Well said Mitch
By James on Wednesday, 16 March 2016
A great post and it is a great example of how those organisations with a less strong (I don’t want to say weaker) commercial brand, need to invest in their employer brand in order to stand out and say…...‘Come and work for us, you wont regret it’!
I have personally heard a few stories from people who have gone to work for super brands and had a terrible employee experience.
Great recruiters will be those that don’t sell the company by name alone but by who they are as an employer and what makes them unique/ stand out.
By Richard Hodgson on Thursday, 17 March 2016
Isn’t this just the opposite stance of what you are criticising, are you now labelling the people that recruit for smaller companies super? I actually agree with some points, there is undoubtedly the back slapping that occurs and hooyah look at me at whatever big company, I see this a boring award events whilst grabbing 45 mins sleep, however larger companies also have challenges. Having done both in, my opinion it’s about understanding what your chosen candidate audience wants, what others are likely to offer and then amplifying the great things about your business and a career within it that connects to their wants, candidates are all powerful right now, they have choices and even at a “super brand” like Samsung my team have to work hard to convince people that the move is right from them.
A lot of Start-up companies now are really attracting talent well, they offer a completely different opportunity and a chance to use all of their experience to drive growth in a much smaller business who will also offer them stock options – they are building an engagement ecosystem that a lot of people simply love, much of the really elite talent is looking at those types of opportunities as really attractive. I have total respect for recruiters that use all of the information to build a compelling story to tell and execute that to a successful outcome regardless of where they work or the size of their vehicle.
By Mitch on Saturday, 19 March 2016
Hi Richard
I wasn’t intending to criticise recruiters working at large corporates - I just wanted to make the point that candidate attraction probably needs to be a stronger skill in recruiters who work for smaller companies.
I’ve also worked internally at a couple of large corporates and they do present other challenges - one of which in my experience was managing the unrealistic expectations of many of the hiring managers. Ironically, one of those expectations that sometimes needed managing was their belief that they didn’t need to sell their employment opportunities.
By Joshua K. Jackson on Wednesday, 20 April 2016
‘The real recruitment heroes are those who can (and do) consistently fill jobs for those companies that are small, that are unglamorous and are unheard of.’
So true - great post Mitch.
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