I am Recruiting, and I do not suck.

Each day it seems another pundit, social media maven, blogger extraordinaire, conference speaker, or HR consultant takes the time and effort to publicly tell me I suck. In the last several months I’ve been bombarded with blog posts, mini movie trailers, Tweets, and various social media messages sounding the alarm as to how the entire function and profession of recruiting is broken and screwed up in the U.S. and the world over.

It took a while, but I’m here to tell them that they’re wrong. I do not suck. The sole reason it’s taken me this long is that my employer expects me to pay attention to hiring managers, candidates, and suppliers rather than to pseudo-experts that haven’t filled a job (or possibly haven’t held one!) since before Google went public. So instead of another blog post filled with unfounded personal opinion and void of any business metric or useful conclusion, I’ll use real data to tell you why I don’t suck.

My customer satisfaction scores clearly indicate that I do not suck. We measure customer (hiring manager) satisfaction and my customers consistently tell my management team that I do not suck. As a team, our scores are consistently over 90% overall satisfaction rating.

My new-hire satisfaction scores clearly indicate that I do not suck. We measure our new Associates satisfaction with our recruiting process and function and our new hires consistently tell me that I do not suck. As a team, our new hire satisfaction scores are consistently over 95% overall satisfaction rating.

My candidate satisfaction scores will indicate that I do not suck. I guarantee it. This is the newest satisfaction measurement for our team to implement, and our scores will begin in Q2 of this year. Again, I guarantee that these scores will prove that I do not suck.

I’m going to go out on a limb and state that a majority of my colleagues don’t suck either, and I excuse them for not taking the time to weigh in on this issue. I realize they’re busy taking care of hiring managers and candidates rather than worrying about klout scores, follower numbers, and traffic to their blog site.

To those of you that choose to tell others that an entire profession or corporate function sucks for no other reason than to draw attention to yourselves with sensationalist headlines and self-promoting social media stunts, go get someone hired. You, right now, become accountable for an entire hiring cycle. No excuses, no hashtags, no global platitudes, no more insufferable self-hype. If need be, find a local non-profit that needs recruiting help, and carry some personal accountability for once. And then, after you’ve worn your big-person pants for a few days, come back and tell all of Recruiting that they suck.

As for me, I'll continue to pay attention to those that really count for something; my hiring managers, my new employees, and my candidates.

Comment by Sandra McCartt on April 4, 2011 at 9:59pm: Yeah by god, suck that bear hugger. And tweet it!

Comment by Paul Alfred on April 4, 2011 at 10:12pm: This is great Frank - so we know you don't suck as a Recruiter - But you can't deny that our industry does have a bad name. How do we turn that around ... Should we not care?

Comment by Frank Zupan on April 5, 2011 at 6:16am: Sandra-Thanks for your comment. If I had any idea what it meant I'd have a semi-witty response.

Paul-Thanks for commenting! When you begin a statement with "But you can't deny" I can only assume you're about to state an irrefutable fact. What data is this conclusion drawn upon? Is it a published survey? Is it your own customers and candidates that tell you this? Or is it anecdotal, and long since assumed as fact?

As I've stated, the constituencies that count for something are giving me the data I need to draw my own conclusions.

Comment by Sandra McCartt on April 5, 2011 at 6:54am: Just a west Texas expression for someone who is dumb enough to hug a bear or in this case keep babbling on about how recruiters all suck. I could have said, yeah, what he said , take that and Twitter it.

Comment by Paul Alfred on April 5, 2011 at 7:03am: No Frank... Back in 96 when I left IBM to do this business that was the growing perception.. I hear this amongst Clients I work with today ... The question is not whether you suck the question is how is the industry perceived amongst professionals who do not work in the industry ... I am also a recruiter so I am on your side ...

Comment by Frank Zupan on April 5, 2011 at 7:25am: Well, no wonder. Daddy taught me not to mess with Texas! ;)

Paul-Thanks for additional comment. I think we agree that much is due to perception rather than reality.

Comment by Steve Levy on April 5, 2011 at 8:32am: As you know Frank, we can't make everyone happy. In fact, sometimes we're only making 1 out of every 100 or more people happy. The rest believe we're callous, uncaring, idiotic, couldn't recognize "talent" if it hit us between the eyes, etc.

What are we supposed to do when we read a resume of a person who is an "Account Manger" or describes themselves as an "Excell" expert?

Dunno, guess I suck too...

Comment by Jerry Albright on April 5, 2011 at 8:48am: Like I said in another thread - I just don't run into "you all suck" in my daily course of business. At the same time the simple fact that other may gives me a warm/tingly feeling.

I'm not in the business of polishing our general reputation. Only mine. A heart-felt "I'm sorry" goes out to those in recruiting that need it I guess. But what are we supposed to do?

How about: Do what we say we will do. Tell the truth. Charge a fair price. Honor our agreements. Pay attention to the details. Don't expect others to do our work. The list of "how to not suck" is pretty long - but all fairly straight forward.

Comment by Jason Monastra on April 5, 2011 at 8:49am: I love this read, and let me begin by saying most of the people I run into on this forum DO NOT SUCK. However, let us not take the public perception lightly. Perception is reality and for those that do see the profession as a shallow grave for low end bottom feeders, that might never change and you will never get business from those clients.

But playing the devil's advocate for just a moment...why do they think this? Is it because they get 100 calls a day for people offering the same service? Is it because they see no value in what we do? Could it be there is such a low level barrier to entry in the industry that it makes for clients being exposed to the most junior in our field and having a poor experience? Or might it be, just maybe that when exposed to the big nationals (and their 200% annual turnover) they simply look at the industry and say forget it?

Think as a client and what would you think?

Comment by Suresh on April 5, 2011 at 9:21am: If you look at surveys that come up with Most Trusted Professions or Least, the common thread in the most trusted ones are those who have People's best interest (firefighters, nurses, doctors, armed forces).

As a recruiting professional, if you truly have the jobseekers best interest, you should have nothing to worry, Just my 2 cents.