Internal Recruiter vs. Agency Recruiter vs. Internal + External Recruiter Partnership

One of the most problematic mindsets I see in talent acquisition is the "us vs. them" mentality. I've previously had this mentality for many years in my experience as a hiring manager. I have been guilty of "us vs. HR" and have had this during my time as an internal recruiter "us vs. hiring managers" and continually needing to prove our value in the process. I also experienced this as an external recruiter "us vs. the internal recruiters" and sometimes "us vs. all of HR." 

Some of my best experiences and most successful hires have always resulted from collaboration and a true partnership. This partnership was always between the hiring manager, internal recruiter, and an external recruiter. When I was a Director of Operations for an MSP, some of the best hires I've made came from a partnership between my internal and external recruiter. 

My internal recruiter always had a preferred vendor to leverage and trusted to get the job done. Of course, I also had recruitment agencies trying to sell me on their service, candidates, and how they are different from everyone else. If you get enough of these emails, you already know they all sound the same over time. 

When I was a hiring manager, recruiting came easy to me. This was because I had an incredible internal recruiter who knew her stuff, passionate about her work, and someone I could trust and always count on. She took the time to understand our business and what is unique about our positions. She knew how to source and recruit the best people for my team. 

When we needed to leverage external search partners, I knew for a fact that if she recommended an agency, it was a firm I could trust and invest my time with. The relationship-building between my internal and external teams allowed me to trust both of them as an extension of my own team. By the time I got on the phone with the external firm, they were already up to speed on our business, how we work, how the company makes money, how we service our accounts...etc. At this point, these partners were verifying and prioritizing skills and helping me set up a process for us to work together.

These recruiters were successful because they partnered with my internal TA team before coming to me. They collaborated with my internal recruiter about the job description, types of profiles I have been open to interviewing, types I would not move forward with, and even some of our specific roles' unique nuances. This made our recruitment process so much easier as I trusted my external team because they took the time to first value and respect my internal recruiter as my own trusted advisor and began to build upon that.

Now that I'm on the other side, I see that this was not a standard practice in the industry. Not everyone is fortunate to have excellent recruiting partners on their team, internal or externally.

Here is where we get into trouble. Agency recruiters, especially ones from larger firms who focus on technical roles, have always been trained to avoid working with the internal HR or Talent Acquisition (TA) team. We are told to go straight to the hiring manager and get the order before the HR/TA team finds out and blocks you. We are told that the internal HR/TA team would always be a roadblock, and they are afraid to lose their jobs if they work with us, and they are not as good at their job as we are. Nothing can be further from the truth. In fact, I know many internal recruiters who can run circles around most of the top billers in the industry. 

This mindset or "best practice" in our industry never sat well with me. I never felt good about going around HR/TA teams to the hiring manager. It causes a division between you and the client. It creates friction between the hiring manager and their HR/TA peers, and overall you will never be counted as a trusted advisor. 

When I worked on internal talent acquisition teams, I often needed to use external agencies. It wasn't because I could not get the job done, or I wasn't as talented or had access to the same resources. In most cases, it was because I was also focused on delivering additional high-value projects. I had projects like an ATS reconfiguration, standardizing job descriptions, building systems to provide data & analytics in real-time, and building a talent pipeline in new markets. I've occasionally worked on strategic initiatives like providing talent market intelligence to the leadership team to determine ROI on new office locations and our ability to staff them. These projects were in addition to weekly status meetings with all my hiring managers, recruitment team meetings, weekly one-on-one's with my direct reports, all while trying to hire a few hundred people in the next several months. 

Our talent acquisition team's plate was full, and we needed additional support for our hard to fill and specialty positions. I can tell you that the agencies that followed the process we set for them and worked with us instead of against us were given top priority and first pick of any positions they wanted to work on. We invested our time to educate them on our roles, company, culture, and strategy. Some of these agencies we trusted so much, they have earned the right to call on our hiring managers' cell phones directly after assigning them a role. We let them manage the hiring process entirely with my managers while we focused on other positions. I was happy to have a couple of external recruiters I can trust enough to take some requisitions entirely off my plate and to loop me in when our managers are ready to make an offer. 

I'm saying all this today because it's something that has been bugging me for a long time. If we can only partner with our internal recruitment peers, we could provide the best customer service because they know we will have value to their current recruitment. 

Today, I work alongside both the hiring managers and the internal HR/TA team in my recruitment practice. This is a partnership. We need to collaborate to provide the BEST candidate experience, elevate your employer brand, and build world-class teams. 

We are successful in working with our clients & candidates following what I call The RiiSE Method. This is our process of delivering Value-Driven Recruitment Services. The RiiSE Method allows us to deliver maximum impact and value by joining you in your search and being a valued partner at every step along the way. 

If you would like to learn more about how The RiiSE Method works and how we can work together on your next search, then I encourage you to schedule a 10-minute call with me at https://joshmadrid.as.me/talk