Where should recruitment sit in the organisation? Part 1
In my fist blog on this subject I outlined the various options of where recruitment could sit and the questions you may wish to answer before making the decision. There where options that can be split into two alternatives: In-house versus outsourced
I do not intend to cover the outsourced option in this sequence, but together with Alan Whitford we will produce our own guide and checklist on why and how you may execute such a strategy. More on this one later.
I’m therefore assuming that the organisation wishes to keep recruitment in house. Good choice! But what questions need to be asked and answered before making this into a firm decision.
Keeping the recruitment function in-house poses the first question, where should it sit within my organisation? I believe there are three options:
- In Marketing
- In HR
- On its own
Today I will look at the first option; in Marketing. I have to admit that until recently this was my preferred option and let me explain why.
I have always believed that recruitment is treated too much like a process; automated, streamline, create efficiencies, save money. Companies trying to sell solutions to companies with in-house recruitment use these and other mantra’s to justify their own existence. Job boards talk about reducing cost and time to hire, ATS vendors talk about automation and streamlining, thus saving money. But did any of these vendors ever told you what the price tag is for a great hire? And how to achieve that goal?
Recruitment should be an experience. While preferrably a smooth process it all starts with the experience. Never, ever forget this central theme: A jobseeker is also a potential customer. Now look at how your marketing department builds a customer experience. They start with the customer: who are my customers? where are they? what do they want/need? and how can I deliver them an experience that makes them come back for more.
It is this final line that I believe has made recruitment see itself as being different. In recruitment they don’t come back for more so we don’t deliver them an experience . “We just need to get them to do what we want, given they already indicated they want to work for us”
Extreme maybe but I believe after 27 years in recruitment this is the premise on which this business is built. A non relationship building, transactional one. BUT the Internet is changing this, creating speed, demands, communities and communications channels that mean we don’t or can’t control the candidate in the way we used.
Society is changing, we no longer have a job for life, we have multiple employers with little loyalty to any. We multi-task, multi-network, multi-communicate and we are brand conscious and we share negative experiences across a much wider network than we used to.
Recruitment will be about multi-channel attraction, no longer does and ad in a local paper, with a monopoly on the job seeking audience. We have job boards, search engines, social networks, Google Base, etc. Some paid for, some free but all with an audience. So what sites do I use, when do I place my posting by week, day or even time of day to help get a great hire and can I monitor all this?
With more ads in the market that ever before, how do I stand out? How can I gain a share of voice? How can I build a reputation and relationship with the job seeker even before I go to market? What visual, headline, words will help the attraction of the candidate. All these are classic marketing questions.
Today many organisations talk about building a “Talent pool”. In marketing speak you could call it CRM, customer relationship management but change customer to candidate and yes, another tool in the marketing portfolio that fits the new world of recruitment.
So Marketing has experience in; attraction. media planning, branding, CRM, viral marketing, site building and very importantly they monitor all activity with a tight ROI.
BUT for all of this it is not clear cut and the next in this series covers why