Remove Talent Acquisition from HR!

I routinely tell clients that if they want to improve hiring in their GOVT staffing firm, they need to remove recruitment from the Human Resource Management Department. Talent Acquisition and HR are very different animals. What is happening in HR right now proves this is the case

Shifting Priorities in HR

“New research from WorldatWork and uFlexReward suggests that recruitment, sourcing and selection-based skills are indeed hot commodities throughout the HR suite.”

Workspan Daily – World at Work

HUMAN RESOURCES EXPOSED!

The current Talent War is more severe than any in recent history, and clearly, our “troops” are Ill-prepared. Suddenly, I am seeing articles that talk about adding “sourcing and selection” skills to HR job descriptions and hiring requirements. HR has tipped its hand! If you are relying on HR specialists to do your recruiting, think again. “Sourcing and selection” have not been high on the training priority list previously, and there are three justifiable reasons for this…

#1 - HR COMPETENCIES AND RECRUITING SKILLS ARE DISTINCT SETS

HR is about compliance. Recruiting is about sales. These two functions mix like oil and water. People who enjoy and are good at compliance activities are typically not good at sales, and companies that are sales-forward (and every company needs to be right now) do not let compliance (the tail) wag the dog (sales). Let me give you an example:

Years ago, I wrote and used an article to prepare candidates for HR phone screens. The article was entitled?“Prepare to Meet the Terminator,”?which is exactly our experience after two decades of working with internal HR departments. The article provided insider secrets for interviewing and warned that “failure to be available at almost any time the HR specialist might call” is a basis for elimination. We have often had HR specialists call health providers at work without notice and tell us that the candidate is “not available” or “rude” on the phone. We also warned our candidates that they should remain patient and professional even if the HR specialist was inexperienced or condescending with the understanding that this entry-level HR person would solely determine if they went on to the next level. Here’s a quote from the article written for candidates:

“First, you should understand that the purpose of the phone interview is not to get to know you better or to do an initial screening. It is specifically designed to eliminate you. The interviewer is typically not the hiring authority but an HR specialist whose assignment is to pare down the “finalists” to the probable 2 or 3, and who is trained to look for red flags that will remove you from consideration before precious time and money are wasted on a face-to-face interview. You will need to know how to handle this scenario with savvy in order not to get terminated before you even land an interview.”

• HR specialists all too often have the mindset that they have the goods, the job. As a result, they make a single call or two to a potential candidate and then assume the candidate is not interested. In fact, their conclusion is correct. All excellent candidates are fully employed, well-paid, and busy. They do not need your company or your job. Your company needs them!
• The fact that so many companies are unable to find employees right now is obtuse to the reality that it might be because no one is recruiting them. (BTW - Career Fairs are not recruiting and represent mid-last-century recruiting models.)

#2 - HR IS FACED WITH TOO MANY COMPETING PRIORITIES

HR has a lot more to do than talent acquisition. We know this by the title: “human resource management” is not the same as finding or acquiring humans. Lists of “critical skills” for HR seldom mention talent acquisition (see here), and, if they do, the emphasis is on interviewing skills, not sourcing or recruiting.

There are a minimum of seven (some lists have nineteen) other important HR responsibilities that tend to take priority over recruiting for the obvious reason that recruiting right now is hard. Furthermore, HR training and syllabi for HR training courses do not even mention talent acquisition. They may mention ATS technical skills as a requirement, but it is assumed that there will be an incessant flow of available candidates to interview from job postings without doing any heavy lifting.

Right now, DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) is taking center stage as companies scramble to become more inclusive and compliant, as it should. However, this is just one example of the overwhelming number of priorities for an HR professional. Of course, DEI has as much to do with talent acquisition as talent management, but the current emphasis is on “creating a culture of inclusion” (see here), NOT on an inclusive sourcing process.

#3 - HIRING DYNAMICS HAVE CHANGED

Although this has been true for two decades, the job is no longer the commodity, the candidate holds all the cards. This means that more will have to be done to sell the job and to sell your brand. Four and a half million employees left jobs just like yours last month. Flypaper recruiting or the “post and pray” method, which is dependent on response to job postings, is an inadequate talent acquisition strategy when your posting is one among 11.5m and 4.5m employees are resigning from jobs just like yours every month. Passive matching through job boards enhanced with AI is only effective during a crisis or when you have the best job with the highest salary - in the present environment, you will actually have to fish for candidates with bait and set the hook, i.e. sales. Put simply - you will need to talk to candidates and “recruit” them to join your team.

TAKE A LESSON FROM NEW CAR DEALERSHIPS

Successful auto dealerships know what they are doing. The flashy new cars are out front, where well-dressed sales professionals await the arrival of the next victim standing on well-polished floors. The soft top is down. The doors are open. Music is in the background. The environment could not be more alluring. They want you to smell the “new car smell,” to sit in the leather seats, to grasp the steering wheel and drool over the instrument panel. Meanwhile, the sales professional recites all the never-before-heard-of features of “your” new car. Ultimately, they insist that you take the car of your dreams for a spin - all intended to make you fall in love with the new car.

Once you are hooked, comes the hard part. They send you to the “compliance department,” finance to qualify you for the purchase.?

Get the point? Putting recruitment in Human Resources is no different from putting the cars in the back of the dealership and having rows of desks with hard-nosed finance managers in front.

Need better recruiting results? Get talent acquisition out of HR.

UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENCE - TALENT SCOUTS VS. HR SPECIALISTS

But don’t make the fatal mistake of creating a new department, say talent acquisition or recruiting and putting the new team under the leadership of HR. (HR trends include HR directors wanting to be seen as business partners and report directly to the CEO as key players, and so should they, as essential as a CFO or COO, since HR manages your most valuable asset, employees). But building the right team is just as important as managing it. Sports analogies come to mind, and we might liken the two positions to that of General Manager and Coach. In the words of Bill Parcells, who led the NY Giants to two Superbowl victories, “The GM is the guy who goes grocery shopping, the Coach is the one who cooks the meal.”

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