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 Chaser on April 5, 2011 at 4:57pm: Perception is more powerful then reality...Its what caused you to write this article. That's the sad truth/reality.

Comment by Edward Caliguiri on April 6, 2011 at 11:20am: I don't measure client and candidate satisfaction in any quantifiable way because their satisfaction is expressed in our continuing to get referrals or assignments or just taking my calls. I love recruiting because the results are so measurable. Like it or not, it's black and white. We either place the person or we don't. Our clients can be satisfied even if we don't fill the position when we provide good candidates to round out their field. Candidates satisfaction is a bit more elusive -- our success is measured by their success.

Comment by Vanessa Keenan on April 11, 2011 at 4:29pm: I love your post. I am never sure how people are going to react in social circumstances when I tell them I am a recruiter. A lot of times it looks like they are reaching for their crosses and garlic. I feel that a lot of the time we are in the same category as lawyers. I know that some people have had bad experiences with recruiters. I think that a lot of others just don't fully understand what we do and have a fear of the unknown. I think it just goes back to that you can never judge whole groups of people and assume they are all the same.