Wednesday Wisdom: HR Strikes Again

Dear Claudia,

I’ve made placements with a small company for years that didn’t have an HR function. Mid-last year they were bought by a much larger company with a recruiting department, and the rules for third party recruiters are changing. They’ve asked me to sign a new agreement that basically says before any candidate can be presented to a manager the resume must be submitted to a central HR administrator who will verify they aren’t already in the company ATS. We have no direct access to the database, so no way of verifying what is true and what isn’t; they say it is a non-negotiable clause for doing business together. Is it time to say goodbye to this client?

Getting the Shaft

Dear GTS,

I’m not so sure you really are getting the shaft, but here’s a suggestion: buy yourself some scuba gear because the water’s gonna get a whole lot deeper while you’re learning how to swim with the sharks. Clearly the company can state their terms of doing business together, and clearly you can choose not to play; but you built a great relationship of trust with the first company over time, and another way of looking at this is that you now have a chance to extend that relationship on a much bigger scale.

It’s not easy to work with big companies, and especially not during periods of transition when it seems like red tape and turf-building rules. But the truth is that after a point the nimble, wild-west behaviors of a start-up become counterproductive to continued business growth, and the age of operational efficiency arrives. Everyone learns the mantra, or moves on: do more, do it better, do it with less. From my perspective you’re sitting in the middle of this profound opportunity as a third party recruiter, and the only thing missing is a relationship of trust with the new sheriff in town. Maybe it’s time to brush off your Valentine’s Day skills and start treating this old friend like you’re dating with intention again.

Only you can decide if you need to say goodbye to this client. At the same time, only you can decide if you want their business badly enough to work harder and win it for a second time. Good luck with that.

**

In my day job, I’m the Head of Products for Improved Experience, where we help employers use feedback to measure and manage competitive advantage in hiring and retention. Learn more about us here.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Claudia Faust on February 11, 2009 at 9:02pm

Joshua Letourneau said:

"But the truth is that after a point the nimble, wild-west behaviors of a start-up become counterproductive to continued business growth, and the age of operational efficiency arrives."

For a counterpoint, this is the 'trap' many organizations fall into; the point that they lose their path and forget how they became who they are today . .

Boy howdy, I completely get what you are saying Josh - and we really agree on this :)). There is immense tension in business between the strengths of each functional area, and when balance is lost and one element (efficiency, or budget, or risk-mitigation, or even return to the shareholders for example) becomes the sole directive, balance is lost. I am guessing this is partly why so many businesses fail, or at least perform so marginally along the way.

Ami recently shared with me a facinating Talent Management Maturity Model that relates to this discussion; it identifies 4 stages that business goes through on the path toward maturity, and the talent management activities that happen to support each stage. Check it out and see if it fits with your view of the world - I'd be curious to hear what you think.

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Permalink Reply by Barbara Goldman on February 12, 2009 at 10:51am

I LOVE THIS TOPIC! The reason that companies get away with the ATS argument is because the HR people don't understand recruiting. The last time an HR person told me that she found the resume in her database so that I didn't deserve a fee, I laughed. The resume means nothing. She can eat the paper for lunch. I took my candidate elsewhere for the fee. She called the candidate of course. I won. I knew my candidate.

Recruiting is not a resume, or a stack of resumes. Recruiting is persuasion, holding a candidate's hand through one of the most terrifying and stressful times in his life -- a job change. Most companies have all the candidates they need right in their databases. Or, the candidates are on the job boards they subscribe to. But, they have to pay fees. Makes them crazy. But it shouldn't. We should all be friends. Instead of understanding that a recruiter has a skill that few people have. We are psychiatrists, salesmen, counselors, and manipulators to the extreme. We are loyal to our clients and can sell our clients like nobody else can. Why? Because if we don't, we don't eat.

An inside recruiter eats no matter what. We don't. Our very lives depend on being great at what we do. And, failed TPRs work as inside recruiters. They know the money we make, and resent it. So, when they find our candidates in the ATS, and grandly proclaim that we don't get the fee, I pull my candidate. None for them. This isn't a war. We are there to do the job. Do they want to fill the slot or not? What is important here?

Our job is hard. If we make it in this business (few do) we are an anomoly. Instead of trying to shoot us down, and dig through old files see if a candidate can be stolen from a recruiter, companies should understand that recruiting is more than resume shuffling. But they don't. I know because I've tried to train inside recruiters. They have their own way of doing things. I was hired by a very large corporation to revamp their entire recruiting process, well, after I did that, the recruiters just couldn't do it. So the VP of HR didn't follow through. Didn't want to upset the staff.

I talked to a large corporation last month about a nationwide contract, they wanted to exclude all candidates already in their database. I said no. My question was, "why would you do that to your company?" If you couldn't hire these people, then what good are they to you in your database?

I've been in this business 25 years. ATS systems are hurting corporations when it comes to filling the hard to fill positions. Recruiting is not paper shuffling!!!! Candidates are people!!!

Barb Goldman
VP Pharmaceutical Management Resources / Bio-Brain

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Permalink Reply by pam claughton on February 12, 2009 at 12:23pm

Just want to say that I LOVE and totally agree with Barbara's answer!

Barbara Goldman said:

I LOVE THIS TOPIC! The reason that companies get away with the ATS argument is because the HR people don't understand recruiting. The last time an HR person told me that she found the resume in her database so that I didn't deserve a fee, I laughed. The resume means nothing. She can eat the paper for lunch. I took my candidate elsewhere for the fee. She called the candidate of course. I won. I knew my candidate.

Recruiting is not a resume, or a stack of resumes. Recruiting is persuasion, holding a candidate's hand through one of the most terrifying and stressful times in his life -- a job change. Most companies have all the candidates they need right in their databases. Or, the candidates are on the job boards they subscribe to. But, they have to pay fees. Makes them crazy. But it shouldn't. We should all be friends. Instead of understanding that a recruiter has a skill that few people have. We are psychiatrists, salesmen, counselors, and manipulators to the extreme. We are loyal to our clients and can sell our clients like nobody else can. Why? Because if we don't, we don't eat.

An inside recruiter eats no matter what. We don't. Our very lives depend on being great at what we do. And, failed TPRs work as inside recruiters. They know the money we make, and resent it. So, when they find our candidates in the ATS, and grandly proclaim that we don't get the fee, I pull my candidate. None for them. This isn't a war. We are there to do the job. Do they want to fill the slot or not? What is important here?

Our job is hard. If we make it in this business (few do) we are an anomoly. Instead of trying to shoot us down, and dig through old files see if a candidate can be stolen from a recruiter, companies should understand that recruiting is more than resume shuffling. But they don't. I know because I've tried to train inside recruiters. They have their own way of doing things. I was hired by a very large corporation to revamp their entire recruiting process, well, after I did that, the recruiters just couldn't do it. So the VP of HR didn't follow through. Didn't want to upset the staff.

I talked to a large corporation last month about a nationwide contract, they wanted to exclude all candidates already in their database. I said no. My question was, "why would you do that to your company?" If you couldn't hire these people, then what good are they to you in your database?

I've been in this business 25 years. ATS systems are hurting corporations when it comes to filling the hard to fill positions. Recruiting is not paper shuffling!!!! Candidates are people!!!

Barb Goldman
VP Pharmaceutical Management Resources / Bio-Brain

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Permalink Reply by Claudia Faust on February 12, 2009 at 3:50pm

Barbara and Pam, I love that you dived into the discussion with such passion!! My only question to corporate recruiters in the room is, do you agree with Barbara's statement that "...failed TPRs work as inside recruiters. They know the money we make, and resent it."

I've known a lot of corporate recruiters that this statement applies to, but many more that it doesn't. Thoughts, anyone?

Barbara Goldman said: