This Week, In Recruiting - Issue 34

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Open Kitchen:?Why You Should Quit Your Recruiter Job

It was really interesting speaking with recruiting leaders at the RL100 Summit last week. We were all wearing two hats - concerned heads-of-department worried about losing staff / not being able to hire recruiters to grow the team, yet also ambitious individuals sensitive to opportunities presented by the unique conditions of this market for recruiter talent.

All agreed that hiring recruiters is one of the hard challenges today. Given the nature of the event, how to best behave as employers was the focus of the discussions. However, today I want to use this space for a thought experiment and take the perspective of individual recruiters and why it actually makes sense for recruiters to quit their jobs right now.

1. 'Natural' Rate of Unemployment

Did you know that there is a 'natural' rate of unemployment? According to standard economic orthodoxy, in a non-cyclical economic period, we might expect a certain percentage of the available working population to be unemployed. This figure is usually understood to be between 3.5% and 4.5% - at rate at which you can post a job ad, expect to get applications and hire people without doing anything particularly extraordinary to do so.

2. Less than 1% of recruiters are involuntarily unemployed

From the survey, What Do Recruiters Want? (please take this, if you haven't already), we can see that less 1% of recruiters are involuntarily unemployed, a figure way below the natural rate. If the sample is representative, then we are close to zero labour market liquidity for experienced recruiters, which means that a) job ads don't work, b) salaries inflate as employers cannibalise from competitors and c) innovations to produce more pipeline begin to emerge. It's candidate driven market, this means stronger negotiating power for higher compensation and improved working conditions.

3. Reduced 'Cost of Discovery' (Inbound ??)

In addition to this candidate shortage, there has also been a radical reduction in the cost of discovery for new job opportunities. In a natural labour market, job seekers might be expected to search for and apply for jobs. This requires effort. And at some point, that effort will be a sufficient deterrent for a job seeker, especially one that has is already has demands to deliver for their current employer. Early results from the What Do Recruiters Want? survey tell us that if you are an individual contributor or senior individual contributor, you can expect on average 3.21 inbound solicitations from employers offering new and presumably better work opportunities, every week. There may be no need at all to search for and apply for jobs if this is the consistent rate of inbound recruiters are receiving. The cost of discovery to new job opportunities has effectively been reduced to zero.

4. Reduced 'Cost of Qualification' (Remote ??)

There has also been radical reduction in the 'cost of qualification'. Attending interviews, meeting potential team mates, connecting with your potential new manager - in the before times, this would all involve a significant time commitment on behalf of the job seeker. In fact, it would be unlikely that an employed job seeker could conduct a job search without taking a few days holiday to attend interviews. With the shift to remote work, all qualifications can be done from home HQ, and so the cost of qualification - another previous impediment to labour mobility - has also been reduced to effective zero.

5. Reduced 'Cost of Consideration' (new job, old job what is the difference?)

Image credit: Netiva 32 Working from Home Tips You Can Do Right Now

Finally, switching jobs in the before times, often meant significant changes to lifestyle. New commute, potential relocate, what about the kids schooling, what-is-hubby-gonna-say. These days, changing jobs may be no more significant than signing with a different password to a differently branded instance of MS Teams. Your life circumstances may stay exactly as they are, with previously critical factors no longer being relevant to your decision making at all. It is far less risky to switch jobs now than before - the 'cost of consideration' is yet another thing that has been reduced to effectively zero.

Final Thoughts, For Now

This market won't last. Though it feels exhilarating to be finally wanted ??, it is complacent to believe that these conditions will persist. Recruiters are not software engineers because it doesn't take 10 years to train someone to be productive as recruiter. It takes 10 weeks maybe. Perhaps even less for a person with the appropriate traits, adjacent skill set and sufficient desire. Consequently, we probably have than less 12 months before the market evens out, supply begins to meet the demand and the natural rate of unemployment comes back to our sector. By then, we might expect the entire market to be uplifted in terms of compensation and conditions, but as an individual recruiter you may have missed the optimal moment to maximise the return can get if you don't switch at peak demand.

So, a combination of K-shaped economic recovery, acute (but temporary) candidate shortage and radically reduced logistical demands of new job discovery means that there may never have been a better time to quit your recruiter job.

Anyways, that is thought experiment from the individual recruiter perspective. Next week, we'll put our employer hat back on, and discuss these how to mitigate these challenges when looking to retain your staff and grow your team.

Now, out of the kitchen, onto the lounge ??

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What's in the News?

Lever raise $50 million Series D round

One of the most popular next generation recruitment technology platforms (confirmed through early returns of the What Do Recruiters Want? survey I might add) gets some much needed firepower to take on a super competitive landscape. It's going to come down to how spends the money best I think -

Personio launches Digital HR Accelerator Program

Has there been a more active HR tech company in Europe this year than Personio? Another fantastic initiative to support their singular vision of digitalising and automating HR and recruitment processes. Digital HR Accelerator is open to existing Personio customers, or any prospective company which signs an annual contract in Nov-Dec this year. What do you get? Free consultation, tailored solution and best practice support in implementation of People Workflow Automation.

SHAZAMME announces Crowdfunding drive

Only six days left to declare an expression of interest in the next stage in SHAZAMME's journey. Some of you might have seen Founder's Focus with co-founders Rick Maré and Nicole Clarke last week - if you haven't I recommend you do, especially if you see the potential in no code solution that SHAZAMME offer. Get in on the action here

If you are a recruitment service provider or technology business and have any news to share,?comment below,?this is your application to get into next week's addition of This Week, In Recruiting. Make sure to @ mention me so that I see it

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What's On Offer? Something from Me!

100% off on the Standard tier on Brainfood Jobs - for recruiter, RPO, agency, HR, rectech roles. All you have to do is complete the survey, screencap the final thank you screen and email me on hung@recruitingbrainfood, at which point I will create a custom coupon for your business and you can post all your recruiter jobs at the standard tier for zero cost.

The only price is to complete the What Do Recruiters Want? survey - once you submit, email me the screenshot of the final screen and I will create a custom discount code for your business where you can post unlimited number of jobs on the standard tier (10 days duration). Crazy good deal for 10 minutes of your time!

If you are a recruitment service provider or recruitment technology vendor have any?exclusive?offer for the community,?comment below?with your offer in order to be included in next week's edition of This Week, In Recruiting. Make sure to @ mention me so that I see it.

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What's Going On?

CTO Craft Con Winter 2021, Nov 8-11, 4-7pm GMT

Recruiters, we need to attend more non-recruiting events. It's so important to connect with other communities, especially in the places where their worlds intersect with ours. Hence, I am delighted to attend CTO CraftCon, starting today with my interview with the awesome Nik Silver. Want to hear what a CTO thinks about hiring? On later this afternoon - tune in here

National Online Recruitment Awards 2021, Nov 10, 7pm - midnight

One of the best awards events in the season this week, as my buddy and long time stalwart of the recruiting community, Stephen O'Donnell hosts the National Online Recruitment Awards - NORA's for short - in a brand new venue. It's a great event, especially for folks who are interested in learning about / buying the latest recruiting tech. Register here!

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep133 - What Do Recruiters Want? 12 Nov, 2pm GMT

We know that hiring recruiters is one of the hard problems in recruiting right now (yes, we get the irony!) so why not talk to people whose job it is to do this hard job? We're speaking to Iulia Crai, Senior Manager Talent Acquisition (Wayfair) representing In-house, Robert Nunn, Head of Internal Talent Acquisition (Elements) representing embedded & Charlotte Doherty, Co-founder, (Doherty & Partners) representing Rec2Rec to agency.

What do recruiters want? You can't afford not to know - register here

Recruitment Marketing Congress, 18 Nov, 1-5pm GMT

This looks like an interesting event. Hosted by the awesome Louise Triance, this focuses on Recruitment Marketing - so folks interested in content strategy, SEO, email marketing, paid advertising and social media strategy might like to pay attention. Free to attend so why not - register here

If you have an event, webinar or podcast going on next week and want it featured on next week's newsletter,?comment below?with the link and event details. Don't forget to @ mention me so that I see it

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Who's Hiring?

Senior Tech Recruiter (m/f/d), Friendsurance, Berlin, Germany

People Ops Manager, Salesroom, London, UK

Tech TA Specialist, Kinsta, Remote EU

Talent Acquisition Specialist - Tech, Street Group, Manchester, UK

Senior Tech Recruiter, Fonoa, Remote EU

Tech Talent Sourcer, Fonoa, Remote Global

Talent Acquisition Manager (m/f/div), Moonfare, Berlin, Germany

Senior Executive Recruiter (m/f/div), Moonfare, New York, NJ, USA

Strategic Talent Sourcer (m/f/div), Moonfare, Berlin, Germany

Senior Tech Recruiter (d/f/m), Taxfix, Berlin, Germany

Tech Recruiter (m/f/d), SoSafe, Cologne, Germany

Manager Talent Acquisition, gridX, Munich, Germany

Senior Recruiter (m/w/d), Vimcar, Berlin, Germany

Lots of German tech businesses, putting money where the mouth is! Post of a job, featured ones stay top of the feed, as well as get featured every week on this newsletter.

If you want to get your job featured, post jobs on the Brainfood Jobs Job Board?here

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Who's Story?

Iwan Gulenko, founder of Codefit and Klang.so takes his turn on the Brainfood Tribune.

If you've followed Iwan on Twitter (you should), then you know that he is one the smartest commentators in recruiting today. Working as an agency supplier, as well as a recruitment tech vendor, Iwan has a unique voice. I asked Iwan 20 Questions - here are his non-cliched answers.

If you are interested in featuring in the Brainfood Tribune, comment below and let me know.

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Who's Moving?

Natalie Glick joins Mambu as Head of Talent Acquisition Strategy after 3 years as Global Strategic Sourcing Leader at IBM. Significant hires by Mambu, exciting to see innovative startups hire innovative recruiting leaders like Natalie.

Carly Poulson joins Unleashed as People + Culture Partner, after a year with Kaluza as HRBP. Such a strong squad being built at Unleashed - looks like one of those examples. which has a clear value system, translating into top class hires

Lesa Molinari joins Blue Yonder as Talent Acquisition and Employment Branding Director, after 3 years as Global Talent Acquisition and Employer Branding at Colt Technology. It's a great market so great people are on the move.

Judith Nguyen Thanh joins CareerFoundry as Director of People, after a year plus with Mitte as Head of People and Culture. One of the great pleasures of doing something like Recruiting Brainfood is following the career progress of early members. Good luck on the Judith - lets talk again soon!

Dr Anne Seebach joins Tilda as Head of People. Mental Health - healthcare in general - is such a great growth market and it's great to see some wonderful ideas manifest as new services for users. Good luck to Anne, who takes over from another brainfood favourite Maria Mezher, who continues to build her independent consultancy business.

Cheryl Horn joins Cazoo as Talent Manager after concluding her project as Workforce Staffing Manager at Amazon. Cheryl brings tremendous experience of scaling up teams from OYO and Secret Escapes, great hire by the automobile e-commerce startup.

Finally, last but not least, Gui Lozano joins Alvin has Head of Talent after nearly 2 years with UpCloud as Talent Acquisition Manager. I remember speaking with Gui before he relocated to Finland and I'm delighted to see the move working out so well. Congrats on the new move - lets catch up soon

If you have made a senior exec appointment to your business,?and feel the wider community needs to know about it,?comment below?with the details and see it featured in next weeks issue.?Don't forget to @ mention me in it so that I see it

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What Are You Doing?

So this space as been repurposed as the Movember page, but so far only Adam Gordon has announced himself as a campaigner.

Donate to Adam's Movember here and help him get to ￡1000 in donations. It is all for a great cause and we should under estimate the challenge of looking worse than he normally does for a month.

If you are doing Movember,?comment below?with what it is and share a link to your Movember page and I'll feature it in next week's issue. Don't forget to @ mention me in it so that I see it

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End Notes

I'm not convinced of the Metaverse but I do have an Occulus and am using it to keep warm as the winter rolls into the UK. Anyone got any active AR / VR game recommendations, other than Beat Saber?

I'm all ears.

Hung

Hung Lee is the curator of?Recruiting Brainfood, and now This Week In Recruiting. Subscribe to both if you are into recruiting or HR or just interested in world of work.