My Future in Recruiting is in My Past

Social Media, the Internet and Job Boards: These tools have changed the way we identify potential candidates. In fact, they have had the single largest effect on the recruiting industry as a whole. We can all fish from the same pond now.

But is being able to fish in the same pond enough? Why is it that two fisherman can go out on a lake on the same day, same time and one comes back with the limit and another comes back with nothing? After all they are fishing in the same lake.

Recruiting is more than casting your bait and finding a name or a resume. As any good fisherman knows, identifying where the fish are is easy with new technology; getting them to bite hook, line and sinker is the hard part. Catching the granddaddy of them all is even harder. My belief is that this applies to recruiting as well.

So where is my future in recruiting? As a third party Recruiter am I now a dinosaur? Have the internet, social media, and job boards replaced me? Or am I like the fisherman whose knowledge and experience sets him apart from the rest?

To answer this question we need to look at the Recruiting process as a whole.

1. Identifying candidates
2. Qualifying Candidates and matching them to client requirements and culture
3. Moving the Candidate through the process constantly pre-closing
4. Closing the Candidate
5. Coaching on Counter
6. Candidates start date
7. Follow up to make sure this is what they expected
8. Run intervention if not

What has changed in this list? I only see one change and that is number 1. We can all find the candidates, but can we qualify and close through to step 8?

Today I scheduled three interviews, two finals, had two candidate referrals, and submitted two resumes. None of this would have happened unless I picked up the phone, got to know my candidates and got them to trust and like me. I may have sourced them differently, but in the end nothing else has changed.

My future is my past. The only thing that has changed is we can all fish in the same pond now! But recruiting is so much more than fishing for names and resumes! Recruiting is about establishing relationships and trust, adding value to the process on both sides, and making happy marriages not shotgun weddings. Recruiting is about relationships and more importantly gut instinct. How many times have you looked at a resume and thought no way only to get on the phone and know this is the "right" guy? Has technology, or anything else for that matter, changed this? Has the way we source changed the value an experienced third party Recruiter adds to the process? I would argue it hasn't.