A quick scan of your LinkedIn feed right now will tell you everything you need to know about the market – a LOT of companies are hiring again, and it is a GREAT sign for the economy, emerging from the pandemic, and getting back on track. Your company is one of those, finally thawed from hiring freezes, budget cuts and RIFs that decimated organizations over the past year.
Opportunity abounds!
Let them all come now!
The only problem is you are certainly not the only eligible bachelor or maiden at the party. Most of your competitors are out there – with their ‘Hiring’ monikers on LinkedIn, their sharing of constant openings and positions, and their previously-unheard-of advertising for their company and its offerings. All I see in my feed, at any hour of the day, are Managers of companies looking to find people themselves. This is what they’ve been told to do, as clearly cost-conscious companies are instructing their employees to fill their own positions.
In theory, this is a smart approach – why pay outside agencies or hire more internal recruiters to do what our managers can do themselves? Who is a better representative of the position and our company than the manager who will be managing the role? It is a sign of company health that everyone is out saying we’re hiring right now! Right?
In practice, however, most managers I have worked with and several I have interviewed detest this approach thus far and feel it distracts from their already overwhelming responsibilities in their department – the actual work they are being paid to do.
These are the some of the reasons given:
- They were not trained properly on how LinkedIn works and is weaponized effectively
- They said there are internal teams who have this responsibility
- It is their least favorite part of every day
- They are not comfortable ‘advertising’ on their personal LinkedIn page
- They feel they are pressured to be active on LinkedIn and ‘take it for the team’
This may sound controversial or ‘old school’, but I do think actual Talent Acquisition professionals and Recruiters are more effective in driving candidates to your company than your Managers. And if they are not, we can help you train them. In my opinion, most of the companies who demand their managers advertise and market their own positions have Talent Departments that are either understaffed or under-skilled.
Imagine if your Recruiting team was comprised of trained Hunters who found the candidates your managers are looking for, and your managers focused all of their time on doing the job they were hired to do well. How quickly that company would scale out of this pandemic.
My friends and former colleagues in the Staffing Industry are busier than they’ve ever been, I mean record-breaking quarters – paid for by companies who do not invest in proper training for their internal teams. The companies who reduced their internal hiring teams during the pandemic are now just transferring that spend to those outside companies to get them candidates, and forcing their managers to find people on their own. Is that sustainable?
Here are a few pieces of advice I have advised some of my clients:
If you are pushing your managers to link, share, and advertise company positions on LinkedIn, then train them how to do it properly and effectively. (We have a training built for this)
Invest in, hire, and train Hunter Recruiters. I’ve written several articles about this subject, most notably How to Hire a Great Recruiter
Train Your Recruiters Well. I obviously recommend Davis Laine for this, as I believe it to be the best ‘real world’ training available, but don’t let them work through trial and error if you can do something about it.
Try to align the TA Department with the operating business units or programs, instead of under HR. In the most successful setups of TA for companies, this is what they have done. Each recruiter supports one or two specific leaders, gets to know their specific needs, and hunts their specific skill sets.
Seek feedback from your managers on the volume, quality, and caliber of the candidates they see from your recruiting team AND feedback from your recruiting team on the processes you implement for anything candidate-experience related.
It certainly seems like our economy is going to roar back and that is great news for companies and candidates. The demand (positions) – which lulled for roughly six months in 2020 – is plentiful and growing. The supply (candidates) is in transition-mode and more likely to look at other options.
Simply put - having great Hunter recruiters gives companies better odds to get these candidates, versus multi-tasking and overworked Managers. My guess is, pretty soon, most companies will agree.
About the Author:
Mike Nicholas is the founder of Davis Laine, LLC, an expert advisory firm specializing in solving talent acquisition headaches through TA setup advisory, specialized recruiter skills training, and RPO Recruiting services.
For more helpful information, visit www.davislaine.com