Categories
Talent Acquisition

Why Traditional Recruiting Efforts Don’t Work

The amount of time, effort and frustration companies go through to find reliable, intelligent recruiting assistance is astronomical.

Over the years, the majority of hiring companies bounce from one recruitment company to another unable to gauge the real reason behind their inability to find effective staffing assistance. Naturally, they wonder as to what the driver behind their inability to form a cohesive relationship with a reliable staffing firm stems from.

Some firms begin to ponder if every recruiter is incompetent (negative feelings do little to help the situation). Others over analyze their hiring message, hiring choices or ability to manage the employees once onboard as the main reasoning behind their inability to succeed with outsourced recruitment efforts.

The candid answer is that the approach of the overwhelming majority of recruiting companies is flawed, illogical and inefficient. Rarely, is it the fault of the hiring organization. Regardless, the inadequacy of recruiting firm performance forces companies to rethink their hiring strategies, budgets and competitiveness in the open job market.

Frequently, the basis on which they choose the recruiting firm they work with is only thing that requires change.

The Overarching Problem:

The overarching problem is that companies can’t recruit the employees who will make a difference because their recruiters never present them.

Hiring companies spend countless amounts of time listening to the reach, network capabilities and methods of finding applicants.

We live in the digital age.  Finding candidates should be no feat in and of itself.

When the clients do interview them, these individuals are difficult to recruit because they have been mismanaged by the headhunter.  Whether this management occurs in several forms:

  •  Over-promising salaries and inflating expectations to get the job seekers in the door.  When the interviewee is told something different by the hiring manager, they are often turned off to the position.
  • Interviewing is the easy part.  Most recruiters can’t properly sell the job.  In any form of human resources, if you don’t get an applicant excited about a position, the client begins at a disadvantage.

When this happens, the hiring company spends too much time trying to sell the candidate rather than being able to determine their aptitude for the job.

The most pertinent question is not how many applicants do you have. Rather, it’s what the recruiter is going to say about a hiring firm’s corporation that will determine the success of the project.

On a multitude of levels, it’s more advantageous to a firm to ask a headhunter how they will represent their particular company.

The process:

The overwhelming majority of staffing companies will present very similar processes. To sell clients, they spend significant amounts of time formulating an organized, set process that appears highly organized, effective and destined for success.  It rarely is.

When you think of the recruiting process as a football play, the reason why these processes don’t work often comes to light. When drafted, football plays often seem flawless. However, most don’t count for variables in the defence. The best leaders on a football field can call variables quickly and accurately when necessary according to the opposite side.

Similarly, effective recruiters can work around hiring variables that come into play during the search process. Most, unfortunately end up folding due to a small variables or huddles which arise.

Just like in football, it’s the players ability to decipher and adopt to changing environments that will determine whether or not they win the game. A set universal process fails to take into account the fact that every recruiting project, company, budget, hiring needs and recruiting preferences are different.

It’s not the game plan; rather it’s the players playing the game which makes a difference.

In the End:

There are only a few questions that need to be asked to determine the aptitude of a recruiter.  The most important questions are who are the individuals representing the company, what are their backgrounds and achievements and how would they pitch the client organization.

By Ken Sundheim

Ken Sundheim is the CEO of KAS Placement, a sales and marketing executive search firm based out of New York City. He is also a writer for Forbes. Follow Ken on Twitter @Ken_Sundheim.