The Dilemma of HR Serving as an Intermediary Between Recruiters and Managers

I am happy to work with HR, just not through them. That's not because I have a problem with human resources at all. It's simply because I can't perform my job to the best of my ability working through an intermediary. Recruiting is a consulting business. And consultants must be able to directly engage the party feeling the pain. Effective recruiting requires that recruiters ask great questions that only hiring managers can answer. HR simply cannot answer the types of questions I ask. Furthermore, they cannot provide me with the input I need to prepare the all-important performance profile which is one of my prerequisites to starting a new search.

Having said that, the problem is not with HR people. It is with job descriptions themselves and the circumstances under which they are usually created. Typically, a manager will have a need and they will procrastinate until that need is so urgent their group simply can't perform optimally without filling the vacancy. At this point, they'll finally sit down when they get a free moment and knock out some bullet points of the skills and experience they think are required to do the job. This becomes an official job description! Not only doesn't this kind of job description tell recruiters or job seeker anything about the job other than what the manager thinks is needed in terms of requirements, it doesn't offer any details about why a top person would even want the job. Using a requirements-intensive job description as the premise of a candidate search is the single greatest cause of hiring mistakes. Creating a performance profile prior to commencing any search solves this problem. But it cannot be done through HR. It is a collaborative process between the recruiter and the hiring manager.

Search assignments based on requirements-intensive job descriptions are doomed to fail. Putting the foundation in place to make a smart hire is far more complex than that. This approach creates the false notion that a candidate can be properly screened by simply going through a superficial checklist of requirements and taking inventory of a candidate's skills. If the candidate says they have the requirements, they're elevated to the next level. If they say they don't, they're disqualified. Can personnel do this type of screening? Absolutely. But this type of screening is cursory and ineffective. All too often, poor candidates are included in the pool for consideration and good candidates are excluded. The biggest problem is that you get candidates who are qualified to do the job, but not motivated to do it. Needless to say, managing an unmotivated employee is a huge burden for managers. Alternatively, you exclude high potential candidates simply because they lack a skill the manager thinks is required. Yet, once a manager is put into a position of having to visualize and describe how the candidate will use the skill and why it's absolutely necessary to have, you'll quickly discover that numerous requirements are merely wish list items with only a few being absolutely essential to successfully doing the work. Yet, you're disqualifying many high potential candidates for missing one of the wish list items but likely have excellent skills that are transferrable and who are motivated and want to do the work. That is why a recruiter must always have a direct relationship with the hiring manager.

The bottom line is that somebody needs to collaborate with the hiring manager to glean more substance than a requirements-intensive job description can offer. Doing this is a major part of a recruiter's value to their client. Leaving this value on the table by slamming the manger's door shut in a recruiter's face is an egregious mistake and ultimately, the quality of the hire will suffer greatly as a consequence.