Recruiters: We've Forgotten Who We Are

(Conversation in 2010 - 2020): "Text me!" and/or "I love your posts on FB and Insta!"

(Recruiting in 2010 - 2020): "What tools do you have in your sourcing stack?" "Can anyone recommend a boolean string for [XYZ]? How do I find those elusive data scientists and software engineers, or find the right candidate population to increase diverse hires?" 

(Questions society has asked about conversation in 2010 - 2020): "Social media and digital conversation - with their benefits - are also taking away from people's deepness of relationships, and their basic in-person communication skills. Where do we draw the line? How do we balance the reach, convenience and accessibility with quality and richness? 

We must accept those examples above into our daily lives, but I have a couple QUESTIONS ABOUT RECRUITING IN 2010 - 2020:

• What good does all this technology, effort, time and money in finding the right people do when we can't remember the last time we talked about closing and converting candidates, let alone engage them in conversation after we identify them with our fancy tools? Perhaps we are focusing too much on the front end, no?
• Why do recruitment teams have candidate-facing Sourcers, hiring manager-facing Talent Advisors, or full-cycle recruiters ... yet hardly anyone can remember the last time they had a specific training on "candidate management" & "candidate care," in-the-trenches recruiting dialogue, and 'closing' to actually fill the job for the hiring manager?

Call me old school, but we in recruiting & talent acquisition need a reminder that recruiting ain't just sourcing and finding people. If I took every recruiting-related water cooler conversation, industry social media string, conference session topic, etc. and compared how many were focused on leveraging technology to find candidate pools, perform mass & customized outreach through the latest recruiting tech tools, etc. versus using thoughtful and strategic elements of conversation to generate responses from elusive & in-demand candidates, and actually convert them into hires ... my guess is it'd be 80/20. Moreover, all this focus is taking away from the interpersonal skills of the recruiting industry. We're seeing it with recruiting AI and "recruiter bots," to quickly give two real-life examples. Want more examples? This may be gray area, but do an honest audit of your offer declines and less-than-ideal "time to fill" metrics ... how many were because it's truly a candidate market, and how many were because you concentrated too much on sourcing and let your full-cycle and 'end game' slip?

Now granted, there is recruiter water-cooler talk like, "Geez, I had three offer declines this week, and one accepted a counter-offer to stay!" but rarely does anyone address why that's happening (beyond "it's a candidate market, shucks..."), or the dialogue you can have with candidates to guide their job exploration and honor their best interests while reducing likelihood of offer declines as they interview with you. We just say, "Ouch! I'm sorry!" and then keep talking about our ATSs, tech stacks and boolean strings. And then we hire trainers and conference speakers to talk about front end sourcing or recruiting AI. (I remember recruiter trainings and conferences when I started in the industry in 2006: that was focused on the actual dialogue, the relationship and the rapport with the candidates and hiring teams). Now, do I have a recruiting tech stack? Yep, it's lean but it's mean. But do I consider myself a good recruiter because I can find a ton of people? Not necessarily - I consider myself a good recruiter because I find the right people (with a couple tools I got), actually engage and convert them, and have them often thanking me in the end for improving their life ... while serving my hiring teams. In world of 80/20 ... I absorb the 80 but (try) to remain 50/50.

Recruiters and TA: think of how much time you've spent lately evaluating your tools and outreach abilities, versus keeping your full-cycle & dialogue skills at standout level? Instead of replying to that Facebook thread to catch up with your old pal, pick up the phone and say hi. Instead of spending 1 hour out of your week researching candidate outreach software, take half of that hour and call (like ... dial) your candidates in-process, ask them how your job is sitting with them, if they have any new developments with other roles they're pursuing, thank them for sticking with your interview process and give them a great candidate experience. That's 'closing' ... and really, just genuine 'care' ... care for the candidate, the client and the process.

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