This is a new one of those new terms that I have seen used throughout 2010 and my curiosity allowed me to look into what people actually meant by this. It seems that a 360 recruiter is someone that resources clients and candidates, recruits, account manages and everything else that’s involved in the whole recruitment process, hence the 360 (degree) bit, clever stuff!

Now moving away the fancy terminology, I think what the terminology makers mean, is what I would call a typical recruiter? Now I admit that there is still a bit of the old school style of recruiter in me from when I was working recruitment desks and in my opinion I don’t understand how I could ever want to recruit any other way!

The suggestion these days is that the recruitment company utilises the recruiter and the the salesperson to do separate parts of the process, one person business develops and sells the services of the recruitment company to potential clients and account manages and brings in the business, whilst the other person or team is solely involved in working the jobs and finding the candidates.

Does this idea of splitting the process into separate job roles work for your company? When I was recruiting I was in control of the whole process as I did the whole 360, would I have made more placements by concentrating on one part of the recruiters role? Does the idea of splitting the role cause dilution of the process and not offer the client the service they seek? Do clients want to deal with one person or a team of people?

Maybe 360 recruiting would work better for the smaller company whilst the larger organisations have the resources to separate the roles.

What’s your views? 360 or not 360?