Time to Broaden our Minds

"Doing a residency in any particular city requires a large repertoire to ensure repeat business – Prince"

Just seen this quote from an excellent piece by

Peter Cook (https://uk.linkedin.com/in/humandynamics) https://tinyurl.com/hjbzpuj

on leadership, and I was considering how this can apply to recruitment - broad experience is often marginalised for niche experience - particularly in recruitment - when actually the ability to understand the problem that requires a (human) solution from more than one perspective (once you get past the technical aspects) is actually rather important.

Indeed, when you consider that most people in recruitment (including myself) don’t have a technical background then that broader experience becomes even more relevant. Yes, I hear the shouts of “knowing your market”, speed of response and other comfort blanket defences. However, if you know your client well (and that takes time from both parties) and understand the shape of projects and programmes on a wider scale, then those values and cultural requirements of a client will serve you, the candidate and your client better than just SAP (i.e.) market knowledge. This works for both short term assignments and permanent roles.

I can only gauge by my own experience but I have clients across Utilities, Telecoms, Finance, Retail, Consultancy, Charity and Public Sector. Primarily I work on IT roles across the board, whatever my clients requirements are; be it Programme Manager/Director or more technical roles; Architects, Infrastructure, and Testing.  In addition, I have recently been successful in working in the HR transformation space as well. Whilst IT is niche, as opposed to recruitment across all sectors, I don’t feel I would be a better recruiter for only specialising in Programme Managers working on Oracle Transformation Programmes in Retail for instance.

When working with a client, does that client choose the brand or the person they engage with to do business with? And if, as I suspect, it is the person rather than the company then doesn’t that Director or Board member want the same person they trust to be the one that handles all areas of recruitment engagement, not just framing out to another in the office as they don’t specialise in this or that?

Above this is what the recruiter does for the organisation. Yes, they go and source suitable people for a role but they also:

-         Engage in sales and marketing for the company

-         Are ambassadors for the business

-         Create talent possibilities for future roles

The measurement of these is often overlooked and is sometimes difficult to measure in the success of the relationship between client and supplier. However, the more people involved in that process the greater the dilution of these actions. No organisation really wants numerous contacts to engage across the business, with the possibility of loss of control or knowledge of whom is representing them in the market and how they are delivering that message – often company’s insist on one point of contact, so specialist recruiters rely on colleagues instructions on the company as opposed to directly taking briefs from hiring managers.

In a world where all the (social media) signs point to greater personal contact as being the key to success rather than less, isn’t it about time that we looked for the benefits in an individual having a greater repertoire to draw from, rather than just singing the same old song? Ladies and Gentlemen, as Jack Nicolson said in Batman (with a great Prince soundtrack) “It’s time to broaden our minds”.

Miles works for itecopeople, an IT and HR recruitment consultancy delivering people solutions across the UK and Internationally to SME's, Nationals and Global brands. Miles has an MSc Business Psychology, is a qualified coach, NLP Practitioner and 20 years recruitment experience across IT and HR.