3 things you need to know about Internal Recruiters

It's been a few months since I crossed over to the dark side and here’s what I wish I’d known about internal recruiters when I worked in agency…

They are away from their desks a lot

I’ve previously spoken about agency recruiters being away from their desks and candidates perpetually trying/failing to track them down. Well the same can be said for internal recruiters, which may be why your call always goes to VM. We have all the usual stuff like jobs meetings, team catch ups, vacancy meetings with our hiring managers, visits from you lot and training. I get that in agency you're instructed to have 90% of communications on the phone - and you’re targeted accordingly - but it’s worth noting internal recruiters can be hard to get a hold of. I’ll always advocate that taking a job spec, negotiations and ‘difficult conversations’ i.e. issues with the recruitment process, should be had over the phone where possible. But if it’s something more simple? An email may be the most effective way to get in touch.

You have become a mixture of that persistent candidate and a ‘recent accident claims’ cold caller

I’m grimacing while typing this but it’s the best way I can explain why internal recruiters do avoid calls from agencies they’re not dealing with. Firstly there’s a high volume of these calls, secondly 99% of them have the same script, and lastly most of them are poorly timed/irrelevant. Again I can see it from both sides, and when I worked in agency I had a fair amount of contention with the old BD targets, however if you want to increase your chances of getting jobs on this way, I’d recommend the following:

Build rapport before a vacancy goes live

Whether it be sharing content on LinkedIn, getting them involved in monthly competitions or an email to say well done on the new role (I got a few of those, thanks guys) aim to get in their ‘consideration set’ before a vacancy goes live. Anything that will make you stand out from the crowd, and not be remembered for a hard sell will do the trick.

The second an internal recruiter posts a job is not the time to call

In-house teams exist because the company has decided they will pretty much always want to try direct sourcing methods first. So calling to get the job on when they’ve literally just posted it is going to guarantee the following ‘Thanks, but we've just spent money on an ad and are going to try this first.’ What can you do instead? Hopefully you’ve already got yourself into the consideration set using the above strategies and you'll be first in line if the direct methods don't work out.

Do your research

Basically everyone is on LinkedIn these days so it’s worth having a swatch over your target clients profile before you call. Check what they recruit for, are they the right person to speak to, how long they’ve been there, and any personal info that you can use to soften your approach.

We have KPIs too

Contrary to popular belief, leaving the world of agency recruitment does not mean leaving KPI’s behind. In house recruiters usually work to the following

• Time to fill (time doesn’t stop killing deals just because you’ve moved in-house)
• Cost per hire (advertising fees, agency fees, assessment centre/testing costs)
• Direct fills (sorry guys, we do like to hire directly where possible and are targeted to do so)

On direct fills – I fully admit that internal recruiters won’t have their ‘finger on the pulse’ the same way their agency counterparts will do. They may not be aware of market rate salaries, candidate shortages, competitor’s movements or have an enviable network of applicant resources. But because we are in house we will strive to hire directly – the reason is we care about:

1. Candidate experience – making sure candidates who engage with our company are treated well
2. Company branding – ensuring candidates know what kind of employer we are, what we do and what our values are
3. Consistency of process – ensuring all applicants are treated equally and in line with SLAs throughout the recruitment process

Unfortunately using agency partners can impact the above factors, and that’s why we can be hesitant to do so. Want to partner with an in-house team? Make sure you ask for full clarification on the above 3 points, and ensure you are able to deliver or enhance the process to benefit of both parties.

I hope this has been helpful. Not my most polished article but haven't written in a while and wanted to get something out! Let me know if you have any other points or commentary to add. Thanks for reading.