You’ve gone through several rounds of applicant interviews. You’ve checked references and done background checks. But you still don’t think any of the people in front of you would fit into the culture your company wants to create or would make excellent promotions in the future. Despite this, your supervisor and the recruitment agency or freelance recruiter you’re working with are pressuring you to decide since you need to fill that vacant position.
Every vacancy has a soul mate:
A strategic talent advisor and a recruiter are looking for candidates for you. The most significant distinction is that, in addition to applicant screening, a strategic talent adviser takes the time to learn about your organization — its culture, leadership style, and values — to design a recruiting plan. The strategic talent adviser gives you four to five prospects perfectly aligned with the company’s concept, saving you time and energy in the process.
A recruiter’s job is transactional by nature: you give them parameters, they provide you prospects, and when you employ one, they get paid, regardless of whether that applicant is among the 19% of successful hires noted before.
Accountability and better, more informed hiring:
There is no accountability with a recruiter in this process; the resume grabber gets paid when a body is put, and that’s it. While there is some motivation to give prospects that aren’t quick flameouts since too many ill-fitting applicants would result in a firm losing revenue, the recruiter is still not a business partner.
Strategic talent advisors want to get under the hood of a company’s culture, understand what that culture requires from a talent perspective, and work with HR and the company’s leadership team from the start of the process — before looking for candidates, before even writing a job posting — to provide a candidate pool stocked with actual talent.
Inclusion & Diversity:
Being strategic early in the hiring process is critical in the IT industry. After years of ineffective “solutions,” more businesses realize that diversity and inclusion efforts must begin at the bottom level.
This brings us to recruiting’s “original sin”: supplying you with a prospect pool that sets your company and your applicants up for failure, especially when it comes to those crucial cultural dimensions of diversity and inclusion. You may tell a recruiter you want a varied applicant pool. Still, it won’t mean much until the organization and the recruiter agree on what “diversity” means: Do you consider gender, ethnicity, and generational differences? Is your talent acquisition professional considering all these aspects of diversity?
AnyBody Won’t Do:
I’m not slighting the entire area of traditional recruitment. Regular recruiters have a reputation for being resume scavengers, seeking a specific set of talents to match a function specified by a firm that may not be thinking strategically about its talent. The recruiter isn’t considering how a firm runs or what role a position plays in the more incredible corporate culture.
The more bodies these recruiters put in front of an interviewer, the more likely one will be picked, and they’ll get paid, regardless of whether that body falls into the 19% of successful hiring, as discussed earlier.
It would help if you had someone who would put in the effort necessary to raise your hiring success rate over the pitiful 19%. Not a resume-grabber, but a partner that knows your company’s culture and can tailor a personnel strategy to fit. A strategic talent advisor is required.
