Recruitment is the 'New Sales'

The broad definition of a recruiter is: an individual who works to fill job openings in businesses or organizations. What isn’t very well defined is the method(s) in which companies or organizations go about finding and engaging talent to be able to fill those job openings.

In today’s ecosystem, a recruiter has 4 primary channels to acquire talent before entertaining external support (3rd parties)

• Inbound: Resumes through job postings, career page or social media
• Outbound: Talent that is sourced and engaged directly
• Referrals: Referrals from employees, partners, investors
• Internal Mobility: Internal promotions — career progression/upskilling/training

Aside from Internal Mobility and Referrals making up 10–30% of hires on average, recruitment teams have two paths to pursue and only one they can directly impact -

1. Inbound
2. Outbound (direct impact)

As inbound channels continue to slow down especially for the skilled workforce (inbound is still more plentiful for unskilled roles), outbound is becoming much more important for companies and organizations to remain competitive.

The difference between outbound and inbound is the ability to sell & compel candidates on an opportunity your company/organization is hiring for. Waiting for a resume to come through, is no longer a safe option as the sole strategy.

To get the caliber of talent we all strive for, pursuing talent is the only option. So what does this all mean — it means, the job of the recruiter is evolving from that of a farmer to that of a hunter in ‘sales speak’.

Here are a few suggestions on how to evolve and recruit the new ‘recruiter’

1. Seek out a Hunter, not a farmer; Ask the obvious, how many hires have you landed on your own in prior companies? It’s not about years of experience, where you worked or how long you’ve worked there, it’s only about results. (eg. # hires this person directly impacted and frequency)
2. Recruiters must be self disciplined and have clear KPIs that produce acceptable hiring results for the company (interviews/offers/hires)
3. Accountability — hold the recruitment team accountable for all deliverables; Gamifying team deliverables is an excellent way to create a friendly recruitment ‘sales’ environment to increase the KPIs mentioned above.