I Know Why Your Recruiting Team Seems Ineffective. Do You?

Ah, Talent Acquisition. The craft that no one seems to think requires any prior knowledge or skill to be successful. Just post a job and let the qualified resumes roll in!

Since 2003 I have had the opportunity to recruit across many industries and see how a number of different companies look at talent acquisition. There are companies that don't do it well but want to get better (which is a start), companies that are terrible at it but think they are great and some companies that actually do a really good job.

For companies where things aren't going well there has always been a common thread; they blame the Recruiters for their lack of ability to attract (and even retain) great talent. There are certainly poor performers in Recruiting however, most of the time, the problem has nothing to do with the Recruiting Team.....in fact sometimes the Recruiting Team is a companies only saving grace!

Below are the top six reasons I have seen companies fail at Talent Acquisition; all companies have at least one of these issues and some have more (or even all) of them. Take a hard honest look at your company and see what you can do to make it better!

6) Poor Employer Brand

Many companies don't like to admit it but their reputation in the marketplace is, well "trash." They have a bad rep for one reason or another; they are known to overwork their employees, have a toxic culture where their people are not appreciated, lack opportunities for growth, etc. If this is your company please know that your internal Recruiting Team fights this battle on your behalf every single day. It comes in the form of ignored emails and/or phone calls, responses from candidates that are something to the effect of "thanks but no thanks, I would never work there" and so on. This type of problem takes time to fix, but there is hope! In this instance your best friend is the "Exit Interview." Find out why your people are leaving and address those issues swiftly and effectively; this gives your Recruiting team something to work with on calls......they can truly say "I am certainly aware of those statements on Glassdoor; here are a few of the things we have done in the past 6 months to address those concerns."

5) A TERRIBLE Interview Process

We can all agree that Hires must be properly vetted but some companies take this to a ridiculous level. If your interview process takes more than 3 weeks and/or has more than 5 cumulative steps (meaning any mix of phone interviews, in-person interviews, panel interviews, presentations, assessment tests, etc.) then it is simply too much. Currently the unemployment rate is less than 4% and for those with a 4-year college degree it is below 2.5%. These aren't the days of 2010 when candidates were begging for any job they could get and were ready to start tomorrow! Job seekers have choices and if you don't move quickly and/or bury them in process they are going to choose to go somewhere else. Also, the more steps in the process the more coordination your Recruiters have to handle so the less time they have to work on other openings.

All hiring is a risk. Make the best calculated decision you can, lock up those professional references, get those drug screens and background checks completed and get that position knocked out. Help the Recruiter get it off their plate and move on to the next need.

4) Compensation and Benefits Are Not Competitive

I have had the displeasure of working at a company whose compensation relative to their competition was woefully inadequate. They paid experienced Managers the same hourly pay rate that entry level professionals made at their competitor and this was common knowledge. Managers would actually leave this company to go to the competition in a staff level role because they made the same amount of money and didn't have the stress of managing a team or any of the other expectations that come along with a managerial role. The mentality of the company was "well we are Company X and people should be happy to come to work for us; we have this benefit, this benefit and this benefit." Really? Do you have bills to pay? So do other people. Despite the low unemployment rate wages have remained relatively stagnant over the last 7 years while the cost of living has increased every year. That hourly pay rate/salary matters......I can't pay my bills with a 20% off coupon at Qdoba. This company also had a strategy that I saw repeated time and time again and was told came from the "top brass". They would ask the candidate at the beginning of the process what they needed to make a change and then move that person forward in the interview process with absolutely zero intention of paying that rate. After the candidate had invested tons of time and energy in the interview process they would make a low-ball offer to them (most times not even matching their current pay rate) and then let the chips fall wherever they may. Not only is this demoralizing to the candidates but it is equally demoralizing to the Recruiting Team; they end up recruiting on the same job opening 3-4 times until they find someone either dumb enough or desperate enough to accept the offer. Also the candidates that feel slapped in the face spread the word to others in their field (people you may want to hire), further contributing to #6- Poor Employer Brand!

3) Hiring Manager Behavior and/or Expectations

I have said it before and I will say it again. If Recruiters did their jobs as poorly as many hiring managers they wouldn't last a week. It has always been funny to me that hiring managers often receive surveys either quarterly, annually or after each hire to critique the performance of the Recruiting Team. When does the Recruiting Team get to complete surveys on the performance of the hiring manager that they spent weeks tracking down? The same hiring managers that left the candidate sitting in the lobby for two hours. The same hiring managers that forgot they asked you to schedule someone for an interview at 7:00am (even though the Recruiter sent a calendar invite with the candidates resume attached) and they call that morning and ask you to reschedule the interview while the candidate is sitting in front of a locked door at their office waiting for that Manager to arrive. The same hiring managers that were completely unprofessional in front of the candidate and trash-talked the company and their own superiors during the interview. The same hiring managers that interview 7 qualified candidates for a position and just keep saying "no" but don't provide any other feedback besides "send me more people to interview."

News for you: if a Recruiter sends you 5 vetted candidates to interview that meet the qualifications for the job and have the requisite experience and you can't hire any of them then the problem is not with the candidates or with the Recruiter.

Now of course any of the above mistakes can happen once in a while and everyone deserves a "Mulligan." But there are hiring managers with whom this is the norm and these are generally the same managers that when asked on a conference call "why is this position still open" like to throw Recruiting under the bus. Maybe it is a good idea to ask the Recruiting Team who their exemplary hiring managers are, who are the talent champions and what makes them champions? And maybe it would be good to start listening to the Recruiting Team when they repeatedly tell you a Manager is problematic.

2) Lack of Tools-

Lots of people seem to think that anyone can recruit. What's so hard? Just go onto Careerbuilder and post the job, resumes from hundreds of qualified candidates will roll in and the Recruiters just screen them. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! This is the mindset of someone who knows absolutely nothing about recruiting. This is the mindset of a Manager who complains that the candidates they are seeing just aren't "rock stars!" A few things here: in an environment of less that 4% unemployment most of the people spending time submitting applications directly online are not rock-stars so you are totally right (also, Mick Jagger already has a job). Recruiters need resources like resume databases to run searches and find talent. They need Linkedin Recruiter licenses with Inmails so they can reach out to passive candidates in the market and generate interest. They need a budget for advertising and marketing job openings.

When I began working for "Company X" we had a few resources; a Careerbuilder resume database license, unlimited Indeed messages we could send to candidates and an Applicant tracking system where jobs were posted and then routed to Careerbuilder to be posted there as well. There was one Careerbuilder license per team so only one person had access to the database; if we wanted resumes we had to send that person a message with the details of the position and maybe 3-5 days later they would be able to send us a quick flurry of resumes. This doesn't sound like a lot but it was something.

At the beginning of one year Company X removed the Careerbuilder database license and provided us with only 30 messages on Indeed per month. At any given time I had over 40 requisitions. So basically I couldn't even send 1 message to 1 candidate for every 1 job opening I was working on per month. Say what?! At this point, other than my Linkedin Recruiter license which I paid for out of my own pocket, the team had nothing outside of 30 Indeed messages for each Recruiter per month to solicit candidates for highly skilled jobs.....other than that we just had to hope and pray qualified talent would apply online. As you can imagine this was demoralizing to the Team. The impact of this change was also reflected in our KPIs as it greatly increased the number of days it would take to fill job openings as well as the caliber of talent we were able to present to our Managers.

It is worth mentioning that this was the same company referenced under issue #4 whose compensation was not competitive in the marketplace. Combine these two issues together and being a part of the Recruiting Team was well....not fun.

And the #1 reason your Recruiting Team seems ineffective is.............................

1) Responsibility OVERLOAD!

This issue isn't just specific to Recruiting. You will generally find that many departments within companies have people bearing the weight of 3-4 full time employees.

At most companies an individual Recruiter is handling anywhere from 40-60 job openings at any one time. I am here to tell you that THIS IS INSANE! I actually worked at one company where I was the sole talent acquisition professional and carried a requisition load that never dropped below 120+ positions and, at one time, tipped the scales at 200+. A couple of Executives at this same company wanted to know why they were still having to pay fees to outside recruiting firms to find talent when they had hired an internal Recruiter. If any of those Executives are reading this right now just know I have a few choice words for you and all of them have four letters.

Not only is requisition load too high but the job responsibilities are often far too voluminous to manage everything. Depending on the company Recruiters are doing all or many of the following tasks: writing job descriptions, conducting in-take calls with hiring managers to understand the job, doing market research to provide companies with compensation data, writing and extending offers, running drug screens and background checks, conducting new hire orientation, conducting phone interviews, conducting in-person interviews, tracking down hiring managers to get feedback on interviews, participating in tons of useless conference calls that having nothing to do with filling jobs, creating reports for their superiors to explain progress (or the lack of progress) on each job, checking references, attending job fairs and hiring events, spending 20 minutes on the phone with disgruntled candidates who didn't get the job, processing every application that comes in (and for every job there are generally 10+ applications.....some jobs receive 50-100+ applications....you do the math....45 job openings at 10 applications each = 450 applications at any given time on the low end... and the kicker is we have to review them all but will be lucky if even 10% of these applicants are qualified for the jobs to which they applied).

I would say the average Corporate Recruiter works 44-55 hours per week. If you ask any Recruiter "how many hours are you able to find each week to sit down and really focus on "searching" for qualified talent that didn't apply directly" you may get a few to tell you 2-4 hours a week....most will tell you "0" hours.

Imagine the productivity increase if your company hired a $40-$50K Recruiting Coordinator to post jobs, craft offer letters, check references, etc. and free up the seasoned Recruiters to do what you hired them for in the first place....to seek out talent and deliver talent to your door.

It is my hope that you have enjoyed reading this article and are now thinking about some areas where your company can improve its talent acquisition model. If you have any questions regarding this content please feel free to reach out. If you recognize your company has one or more of these issues (or even some that aren't mentioned) and would love some proposed solutions please also feel welcome to reach out.

You may contact me at [email protected].

Thank you.