How can recruiting not be complex, but also not be easy?
Human Resource professionals are often the ones who propagate this myth. Many HR professionals appear to resent recruiters because they see a recruiter make a call into their company, get a search, fill it in weeks, and then receive a check that equals three to six months of their salary.
They see this work as easy. If it was easy, the HR department would have done it.
Easy assignments are no longer given to recruiters, namely because it’s too expensive. Recruiting is simple, but it’s not easy. Here’s why:
- Countless variables: Skills required, compensation offered, location, personality, technology, education, etc.
- Countless decision makers: Never mind the committee that the company has lined up that must agree on hiring a candidate. Even if they can agree and make an offer that will be acceptable, there is no certainty of acceptance. Usually, the candidate’s spouse has to agree. Sometimes, even more difficult are the children or parents. Multiple times, daddy’s 16-year old princess has been the actual decision maker when determining if he takes a job. There are many decision makers.
- Uncontrolled deliverables: Recruiters market a product that has a mouth and a mind of its own. I defy you to show me any other sales field, from financial services to airplanes and computer systems to livestock, that when the buyer offers to purchase the product at the offered price, the product decides that while it does want to be sold, it doesn’t want to be sold to that buyer for that price in that town.
Recruiting is simple, but it’s certainly not easy.
(For more information about maximizing the benefits of working with a recruiter, download a copy of Dan Simmons’s e-Book, Hunting the Headhunter: Your Guide to Debunking Myths, Cutting Costs, and Changing the Way You Play the Recruitment Game.)
