Part 4: Recruiter Development Beyond the Training Agenda

Following in our series on Building Next-Generation Recruiter Capabilities, the question I get asked the most is: how do I help my recruiters develop into Talent Advisors? And it is certainly a challenge. Less than 1 in 4 recruiters is satisfied with their overall development, compared to about 2 of 5 employees within an organization.

The main trend I see happening to address this challenge is the creation of formal training agendas for the recruiting team. This is a good start and can instill a focus on learning on the team, but these agendas alone are insufficient to build the Talent Advisor capabilities we need in our recruiters.

Recruiters also need to activate the learning potential from on-the-job experiences. These experiences provide three times greater impact on recruiter performance than formal training programs. (Not to mention on-the-job learning is usually less expensive than formal training.)

Focus on the following activities to give recruiters high-impact work experiences:

• Access to best practice—Activities that teach the right approach to a problem (e.g., working with a lead or executive recruiter)
• Scope expansion—Activities that increase recruiters’ responsibilities (e.g., contributing to a workforce plan)
• Change and adversity—Turbulent situations that build flexibility (e.g., working on a requisition with rapidly changing circumstances or requirements)
• Challenging relationships—Situations that develop relationship skills (e.g., interacting with uninterested candidate leads)
• Persuasion and teaching—Activities where recruiters learn to influence (e.g., communicating a difficult decision to a hiring manager)
• Difficult decisions—Activities where the costs of making mistakes forces reflection (e.g., defining hiring needs for a new position)

CLC Recruiting members, download an inventory of high-impact on-the-job experiences for recruiters for each of the main Talent Advisor capabilities to use during development sessions with individual recruiters.

Part 3: How to Spot a Talent Advisor

As part of our series on Building Next-Generation Recruiter Capabilities, Collin wrote a couple weeks ago about how to define Talent Advisor capabilities in our recruiters. He explained that Talent Advisors collaborate with hiring managers to influence staffing decisions, rather than fill orders and drive for satisfaction.

That’s nice as a goal, but you may be wondering, how do I gauge how well recruiters fulfill their role as Talent Advisors? Keep two things in mind:

• When hiring recruiters, focus on observation over description when assessing recruiter candidates—Traditional external sources of recruiters with strategic skills, such as recruiters with sourcing or sales backgrounds, aren’t as effective as many think. You need to rely on effective selection practices to find them. Use role plays in recruiter interviews to have them show you how they would influence hiring managers, or have them create a sourcing report for a mock opening at your organization. (CLC Recruiting members, see how one organization excels in assessing Talent Advisor capabilities in recruiter candidates.)


• When setting role expectations for current recruiters, measure strategic expectations as you do operational expectations—Most recruiters are held accountable for process metrics such as volume or time-to-fill. But, when recruiters are held accountable for “business impact” metrics such as new hire retention, they exhibit 25% greater performance. Decide what best indicates Talent Advisor behaviors on your recruiting team, provide discrete measures of strategic effectiveness, and weight these measures alongside traditional process-based metrics. (CLC Recruiting members, see how one organization excels in measuring recruiters on Talent Advisor capabilities.)

Check in next week for a summary of how to develop recruiting team into Talent Advisors.

What Does Recruiting Have to Do with Retention?

From our featured guest blogger Lynne Mayers, Director, Corporate Leadership Council:

Back when I was a member of the CLC Recruiting research team, I had many conversations around how Recruiting can add value and be a “strategic partner” to the business. The focus then as now was: deliver high quality hires fast and cost effectively; drive workforce planning; support development of competitive employment brands.

Now that I work across our CLC practice areas and talk to Heads of HR and Talent, I see a couple of additional opportunities for Recruiting to act as a strategic partner. One of them is retention of high performers and high potentials.

So what does recruiting have to do with retention?

Our CLC Human Resources data shows that one in three high potentials is currently planning on leaving his or her job in the next 12 months. And organizations are making some fatal mistakes with respect to high potential management, driving those risk levels up.

Some line leaders, though, remain unconvinced that retention is a burning issue. One Head of HR we work with recently shared how his CEO had been galvanized into action when his own daughter announced her decision to leave her employer for a rival organization and went through 4 or 5 “exit interviews” designed primarily to woo her back. Of course by that time it was too late—and she told her father that if the organization had put half as much effort into keeping her before she decided to leave as they put into wooing her back after she announced her intention to leave, she wouldn’t have been looking in the first place.

What does this have to do with Recruiting? Not all line leaders will have the benefit of that “aha” moment before they start losing their best talent. But Recruiting is close to the decisions that candidates make, and how they feel as they make them.

As you successfully dislodge talent from their current employers you are in a position to learn: what drove their decision to leave; what did they struggle with; and how did their organization react when they announced their decision to leave? You can use this not only to help inform retention plans for the individuals that you woo, but also to share with your partners in HR so they can bring to life for their line clients the potential risks they face, and the dangers of assuming that all’s well with their top talent.

In other words, sometimes it takes more than data to make a business case—sometimes a great story can make people sit up and think. Do you have some great stories to share?