As a recruiter we are here to fill job specs by word searching and matching then pinging off CV’s, right?

Wrong!

To many recruiters rely on job specs passed through a multi layered recruitment process with little or no understanding of how the role fits into and affects the team or how that role/team will progress in future. With the shortage of technical skills available to companies and the increased demand for talent this can result in wasted time on interviews, candidate frustration, increased attrition and an organisations recruitment brand being damaged.

Good recruiters should be working with organisations to understand what their goals are by filling a particular role. Recently I was asked to find a number of Web Developers for a team to fill a variety of roles. The roles provided different areas of expertise across the team but all had the same “buzz words” and “key skills” required.

Now what would be the “easy” thing to do would be to throw myself into the hunt for these developers, trying to match all of the skills on the CV, blanket sell the roles in a way set up interviews and then wait for the results. But I didn’t, luckily I was in a fortunate position to have a very good relationship with the team manager so spent some time really understanding how the roles fitted in. We discussed how the team would be developing, where the importance lay and also how to retain people they would be employing. This meant that with the market knowledge I have and also breaking down the requirements with the manager we came to a conclusion that the 3 roles actually should  actually be aligned in a different way with one position changing completely meaning that anyone who I submit will be the right fit. So the Web Developer’s they originally where looking for were not the ones they needed.

So don’t be clone recruiters, get to know your clients and use the market knowledge you have to consult with them and help them as well as yourself.

May the force be with you!

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