Kangarooster

I met with a couple of great guys last week in Holland to talk about developing some training programs for recruiters and it got me thinking. I know that is a worrying sign but it just happened. And I thought: who or what is a recruiter?

I think it is easy to understand that those working frontline in a staffing firm, recruitment consultancy or a search firm are, or can be, defined as “recruiters”. But today in the client world who or what is a recruiter?

Lets look at the internal process to identify those who recruits:

• Line Management/Department Head/Supervisor. These are the individuals who do the real recruiting in many organisations. They often have the budget to handle there own hiring needs, will contact a staffing firm and brief on their requirements/needs. They can contact a recruitment advertising agency and get the ad produced and placed. They can even handle that first phase communication with a candidate.
• HR professional. In many organisations it is an HR professional who is the first line of contact, whether it be taking a paper based CV or an electronic one, looking at candidates who have registered on-line or taking a call they interact with a potential future employee. But do they always interview the candidates? And does that make them any less a recruiter?

So these would be the traditional definitions of those who recruit. In my next series I will look at the challenges these groups have today when hiring. And I will be asking myself: are they really equipped to handle the recruiting needs of the 21st century?

I have still one bigger question when defining who or what is a recruiter. In any organisation should not everyone be a recruiter? The actions and comments of the CEO can have a greater impact on an organisation than one “rouge” hiring manager interviewing badly. A board director saying something inappropriate at a industry conference and then being quoted, can do more damage to hiring into that company than we often expect.

We live in a world of constant communication, a world where with so many channels for news or opinion the need for content is unrelenting and everything we say or do can potentially create news. With blogging we even become the creator and sometimes the news itself.

So in this environment from the top down we are all recruiters.  What we say and do impacts on the jobseekers perception of us and our organisation. Brand reputation is a word often used in Public Relations. Just put the word Recruitment in front of Brand and that is the reality we face today.

But what has all this ‘thinking’ got to do with training?

Because it is important to develop courses for those in the HR/Recruiting. But let us not forget the line managers for it is there that all the great work that happens at the attraction stage goes to waste. And lets educate senior management on the impact they can have on recruitment.

The Rooster

This entry was posted on Monday, March 12th, 2007 at 8:01 pm and is filed under Arbeidsmarktcommunicatie, PR en media, Online recruiting, Online marketing, English. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I met with a couple of great guys last week in Holland to talk about developing some training programs for recruiters and it got me thinking. I know that is a worrying sign but it just happened. And I thought: who or what is a recruiter?

I think it is easy to understand that those working frontline in a staffing firm, recruitment consultancy or a search firm are, or can be, defined as “recruiters”. But today in the client world who or what is a recruiter?

Lets look at the internal process to identify those who recruits:

• Line Management/Department Head/Supervisor. These are the individuals who do the real recruiting in many organisations. They often have the budget to handle there own hiring needs, will contact a staffing firm and brief on their requirements/needs. They can contact a recruitment advertising agency and get the ad produced and placed. They can even handle that first phase communication with a candidate.
• HR professional. In many organisations it is an HR professional who is the first line of contact, whether it be taking a paper based CV or an electronic one, looking at candidates who have registered on-line or taking a call they interact with a potential future employee. But do they always interview the candidates? And does that make them any less a recruiter?

So these would be the traditional definitions of those who recruit. In my next series I will look at the challenges these groups have today when hiring. And I will be asking myself: are they really equipped to handle the recruiting needs of the 21st century?

I have still one bigger question when defining who or what is a recruiter. In any organisation should not everyone be a recruiter? The actions and comments of the CEO can have a greater impact on an organisation than one “rouge” hiring manager interviewing badly. A board director saying something inappropriate at a industry conference and then being quoted, can do more damage to hiring into that company than we often expect.

We live in a world of constant communication, a world where with so many channels for news or opinion the need for content is unrelenting and everything we say or do can potentially create news. With blogging we even become the creator and sometimes the news itself.

So in this environment from the top down we are all recruiters.  What we say and do impacts on the jobseekers perception of us and our organisation. Brand reputation is a word often used in Public Relations. Just put the word Recruitment in front of Brand and that is the reality we face today.

But what has all this ‘thinking’ got to do with training?

Because it is important to develop courses for those in the HR/Recruiting. But let us not forget the line managers for it is there that all the great work that happens at the attraction stage goes to waste. And lets educate senior management on the impact they can have on recruitment.

The Rooster

This entry was posted on Monday, March 12th, 2007 at 8:01 pm and is filed under Arbeidsmarktcommunicatie, PR en media, Online recruiting, Online marketing, English. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.