In-house recruitment & Other Animals

Contentious topic.

Especially as people in this space get very excited on blogs and t'internet. I know I'm venturing into the lions den. Or at least the monkey enclosure. 

But I need to talk about in-house recruitment. I have an issue with the way we're doing it. By 'we' I mean businesses, HR, people who are 'doing it'. I should caveat this entire post by saying that one of the teams I'm responsible for is an in-house recruitment team. A bloody brilliant in-house recruitment team as it happens. This blog is not about them. Further disclosure: this is also my own heritage. I'm not talking about any of the places I've worked before. 

Having established that I am actually speaking with no live first-hand knowledge on this, I'll plough on...

My main issue with in-house recruitment is the model of origin that a lot of businesses base it on. Namely, the recruitment agency model. While there are lots of similarities between agency recruitment and in-house recruitment, they are not the same beast. Thinking that to have a thriving in-house recruitment team you need to mimic recruitment agencies is, to me, like sticking some antlers and a red nose on a Shetland pony and expecting it to fly round the world pulling a sleigh. They both eat hay, they both like the cold, they're both cute. Not the same animal. 

Recruitment agencies are sales businesses. They exist to make money from putting people in jobs. Yes, they will talk a great game about cultural fit and finding you high performers, but that isn't their raison d'etre. Making cash from bums on seats is. Ergo, they have KPIs that are all about that goal - conversion rates, number of vacancies filled etc etc. Good agency recruiters are motivated by cash. Brilliant agency recruiters are motivated by cash AND understanding your business needs. Phenomenal agency recruiters are motivated by cash, fulfilling your business needs and fulfilling candidates' aspirations. (but now we're talking Unicorns, not Reindeer).

Too many businesses drown their in-house teams in high-volume, KPI-driven seas. They measure them to death, fixate on conversion rates, time to hire. Then they pay them about half what they can earn as a good recruiter in an agency. 

"So, give them placement bonuses then", I hear you say. Really? The way to get your Shetland to fly is to stick a fat guy in a red suit on their back? No. 

And here's the why. Your recruitment team are the promo girls and doormen for your business. Their job is to be really clear about the kind of clientele you want to attract, go all out to find them, and then have a great sixth sense for spotting them and monitoring admission. Why target them on getting as many people through the door as quickly as possible, if your bar-staff then spend all their time dragging drunk people off the dance floor and breaking up fights?  Your bar staff's job is to fix the drinks and help everyone have a great time. Am I stretching this analogy too far?

Put bluntly, your Recruitment team are the fuel in your Talent strategy. Not just Talent acquisition but Talent deployment, Talent development; Talent everything. If they are too busy ploughing through vacancies in the upper double digits, or trying to put bums on seats as fast as possible, then you have thrown your Recruitment baby out with the Talent bathwater my friend. If they aren't part of the conversation about what talent looks like and how to identify it (internally and externally), then you are missing a very large, very important trick. Stop trying to make them behave like something they're not, like something that exists for a whole other reason. Stop letting them live on the porch like a well behaved outdoor-cat - bring them indoors, let them into your proper HR family. Let them up on the sofa. You won't look back.