Want to Accelerate Your Recruiting? Make Your Recuiter Your BFF...

Now before you think I’ve fallen off the deep-end, give me a minute to explain.  I’m not saying that you need to be BFFa with your recruiter in the sense that you need to spend weekends together, braiding each other’s hair. What I am saying is that if you are a manager, one of the jobs you will face over-and-over again is hiring people, and by getting tight with the person who will provide you talent, you will dramatically reduce your time-to-hire.

You may be the best hiring manager in the world, but eventually people will leave and you will need to replace them. If you are like most hiring managers, you then rush like mad to find a replacement; you spend less than 5 minutes chatting with your recruiter, you complete the requisition, then you cross your fingers and pray that a perfect genius will just magically find your job posting, and that it will match exactly what they’ve been looking for.

While I wish it was always that easy, I can attest to the fact that finding talent takes time, and that recruiters who find talent fastest, do so because they already know exactly what you are looking for. If the only time you ever see your corporate recruiter is at the holiday party, then the information I’m going to share is going to be a little revolutionary, and I hope, open your mind to the opportunity that may potentially exist for your company and process.

One of the keynote sessions I attended at Talent Connect this past week in San Francisco was a riveting presentation by Express Scripts' Senior Director of Talent Acquisition Jennifer Shappley and Vice President of Talent Management Melanie Curtis. They shared about the change that occurred in their organization when they transformed the role of recruiters to HR Business Partners. You can see the entire video here: http://youtu.be/JoAtjPNKpwQ.

Instead of the traditional methods that many in corporate environments are accustomed to, Shappley and Curtis implemented an HR Business Partner role where their recruiters were a real part of each business segment of their organization. They didn’t just communicate with managers when it came time to fill a job, but they regularly engaged with hiring managers on a consistent basis, sat in on their team meetings, attended and contributed to client pitches, and genuinely understood each role they needed to fill as well as the dynamics of each individual team.

So, for my Big Take Away #3 from Talent Connect, I am going to share the Top 4 keys to Success in Implementing an HR Business Partner Relationship. 

1.       HR Provides the Talent: Before you can engage in an endeavor of this magnitude, you must ensure that your company needs to have the right talent in the right place. For a true HR Business Partner, you cannot simply fill the role with a recruiter, your organization must have someone who can manage relationships, think strategically, contribute to many business arenas, AND find and source great talent.

 

2.       Shared Outcomes: In order for HR and the Business Team to help each other, there must be shared interest in achieving the same goals. The recruiter needs to be viewed as an extension of your business that is also a talent partner who can help the business succeed.

 

3.       Relationships: The relationship from order-taker to strategic business partner is critical in making this transition. This information is supported by a study from Bersin by Deloitte’s High Impact Talent Acquisition Report 2014, which supports these findings, “Developing strong relationships with hiring managers is the top driver of talent acquisition performance.”

 

I want to take an extra moment to reflect on this point because for every business initiative I discuss in my blog, admittedly, there are several associated with cost, but this is something that recruiters can do within a business that costs nothing. Even if you are remote from your hiring managers, you can Lync or instant message them, send them email, connect through LinkedIn… whatever. Creating relationships doesn’t cost your organization a penny, but you have to start with a desire to accomplish that which supports the greater good of the organization, and a genuine desire to cultivate those relationships.

So what does this mean from a practical stand-point? Well, at ExpressScripts, they reduced their time-to-fill metric by 60%! Imagine if upgrading your recruiting team meant that your time-to-fill had the same impact. I would think those results would support this type of initiative.

4.  Consistent Process: Whenever I work in a company, the first thing I do is analyze the recruiting process. Typically I am provided a map of the existing process, which includes an interesting design of a lot of confusing elements, and my first project is to align the recruiting process to the business strategy, and creating a simple, easy-to-follow system. The ExpresssScripts team supported this concept and included that there are times when the process will be adaptable to exceptions, but that overall there will be a consistent practice of customer service and ease of recruiting that the system provides.

 

Whether you are a Talent Acquisition Professional, Recruiter or a Manager, I think that there are some valuable take-aways here for you. I hope you found this information helpful. Please feel free to comment below.

Tomorrow, in lieu of posting a LinkedIn Talent Connect Take-Away, I will be posting some fun and festive Halloween posts from my HR team, and will resume my Top 10 list from LinkedIn’s Talent Connect on November 1st.