Recruiters vs HR...It's Tom & Jerry Time!!!

Recruiters vs HR...it’s as old as, well...the recruitment industry! Like cats and dogs, Tom & Jerry, there seems to be, in the UK certainly, this automatic default position of mistrust.

It’s reared its head again, with blogs appearing, including Bill Boorman’s guest post on Punk Rock HR, and no doubt discussions will be had at HRevolution.

Well I’ll let you in to a secret...it’s always been like this! Seriously, on my first day in recruitment, over 20 years ago, amongst the advice and on-job training I received about interviewing, cold calling and selling in candidates, I was told...

...ignore personnel; you don’t want to speak to them. They’ll ask you to send the CV through, then they’ll question you, and if you say that your candidate should to be interviewed, they’ll challenge you...

And it’s not changed!

As you read this there will be a rookie recruiter somewhere being told...don’t speak to HR, they’ll want an e-mail with reasons to justify the candidate, they’ll negotiate fees and keep you waiting...forget it, you’ve got targets to meet and you need to get your candidates on interview NOW!

In fact recruitment companies spend lots of money on training their consultants how to AVOID HR!

They’ll deny it of course, but the transactional sales model, which has been favoured by the majority of the recruitment industry for over 50 years, usually dictates that there isn’t time to follow PROCESS...

...which is what it’s all about in my opinion...HR makes recruiters justify what they are doing, asks them to follow a process, whilst the average recruiter ideally wants to phone a harassed, time-pressured line manager, with a candidate that they’ve found who they think is a perfect match, book an interview over the phone, push back on feedback and try to CLOSE THAT DEAL!

Not all Recruiters are like that, clearly...but then not all Recruiters dislike HR!! I have always developed relationships with HR, treating them as much my client as any line or hiring manager. One of the reasons I moved into HR recruitment was because of the strong relationships I had built.

We’ve all had times though when we don’t think HR gets it...a marketing recruitment colleague said to me the other day...”HR wasn’t sure, said they didn’t think the person was a good fit, but I persuaded them to send the candidate along to see the hiring manager who loved him and hired” ...but I’m sure that HR would point to hasty hires by line managers who didn’t really follow a true recruitment process, offering little selection and engagement. In my colleague’s example HR did set aside their initial view for the wider good of the business.

Let’s face it, HR want to get the best talent, the best fit for their organisations, the people that will add value and be part of the company’s growth, whilst Recruiters are looking to place candidates.

HR are usually measured by many deliverables, of which talent acquisition and retention is just is one, whereas the vast majority of Recruiters are measured and judged by the number of deals they close.

It’s a bit apples and pears…cats and dogs…it can work, but in many cases that’s not always the same thing, not always the basis for a mutually beneficial relationship.

So many Recruiters have always tried to bypass HR (hate is a very strong word) and many HR professionals have always had a mistrust of recruiters who think they’ve found the most outstanding candidate that needs to be hired NOW before they disappear to another company.

I think it’s straightforward...HR like recruiters who make their job easier, who respect the role they play in their companies talent process and want to help them find the best talent. Likewise Recruiters like HR who value what they do, who give them the information that they need to identify the talent that companies want. A lot of the time this works fine, but then pressures of budgets, targets, misinformation and miscommunication sometimes kick in.

So rather than Recruiters thinking like HR and HR thinking like Recruiters why not try seeing each other’s point of view...why don’t HR spend time in their recruitment supplier’s offices, seeing how they work, how the consultants are managed, measured and rewarded, what the values and culture are...and why don’t recruiters spend some time in an HR department and find out what the talent proposition is, the engagement and the vision, what the budgets are, what pressures and priorities they work with, and get some feel for all the other things HR does.

Maybe, just maybe, they may even learn...to LOVE each other!!

Comment by Randy Levinson on May 6, 2010 at 12:50pm: Mervyn,
You make some great points here and yes, you are calling it like it is. There is a latent animosity on both sides of the fence here that is as old as the inception of the roles themselves. I appreciate how at the end of your article you suggest both roles spend time in the other’s lane. In fact this is what was done at one of me previous employers…almost. Recruiting got a view and taste of HR but it was a one way street, HR never valued the recruitment process enough to drive down that street the other way.

I think one element here that is important is that these are different skill sets requiring different expertise and that it is difficult for any single role to be the end-to-end solution. While recruiters are diving deep into the skill-set, driving the hiring manager to be clear about the requirement and then scouring the marketplace and investing the time and energy for the perfect fit for the job – HR is looking to make sure that there is an organizational fit, that the role is necessary, that there isn’t redundancy, that the comp aligns with the rest of the team, etc. Two related and yet different missions.

Unlike Tom and Jerry, who are in fact polar opposites with almost nothing in common, Recruiting and HR do have to work together, but perhaps there is another spin to this. If HR works closely with the manager on the front end to cover a lot of their needs, and then that is communicated clearly to the recruiter by both HR and the Hiring Manager at the beginning of the process, then maybe Recruiting can be left to do what it does best unhindered but as an equal partner – fill the jobs.

Let’s face it, Recruiting has a job to do whether internal or external and that is to fill the jobs. Internally recruiting wants to work with the manager to meet the manager’s time frame for filling the job. Externally recruiting wants to fill the job as quickly as possible to drive revenue. In both cases it is often, as you describe the fact that HR gets in the way that drives recruiting to find a work around. While I have held out the olive branch to HR on too many occasions to count, I have never seen it come from the other side.

What I am saying is this, but for HR’s lack of understanding of the process of recruiting – recruitment would not seek out the work arounds. I believe it is long past the time for HR to take the wheel and start driving down the street toward recruiting.

Comment by Mervyn Dinnen on May 6, 2010 at 1:17pm: Thanks for your comment Randy and for the points you raise. I agree that it needs to be a 2 way journey and HR needs to understand more the the recruitment process and what it takes to not just attract candidates but also to match, keep them engaged in the process, with feedback, commentary and insight. An understanding of how 3rd party recruiters are managed, motivated and rewarded would also help.
As for Tom & Jerry, well I could have gone for Punch & Judy, but wasn't sure how well this would have traveled across the Atlantic! Tom & Jerry are polar opposites, and maybe HR and Recruiters sometimes like to think they are too!

Comment by Lesley Hardy on May 6, 2010 at 3:18pm: I think you hit the nail on the head. Having been in a recruitment agency, and yes, been trained to avoid HR at all costs, I now am HR. I see the argument from both sides now.

My view is in order to truly partner with your client company, you really need to work with not on the decision makers, but also the influencers - often HR. They only get frustrated with pushy recruiters because they are privvy to a lot more inside information about said harrassed manager and a recruiter can not always know the whole picture.

In my experience transactional recruiters get nowhere in comparison to people with great relationship and listening skills. With more organisations opting for RPO and internal HR recruitment models, maybe this gap of understanding will close. Or maybe the conflict is there for a reason and serves to keep both parties honest.