If your company has had problems filling open positions with top talent, of if you’ve made a few too many hiring mistakes, then maybe your staff doesn’t know the difference between executive recruitment and hiring. In fact, it’s a critical distinction that has real impact on your ability to build a top tier employee team and deliver solid bottom line results.
Marketing guru and author Seth Godin succinctly explains the difference in his book, The Purple Cow.“Hiring is what you do when you let the world know that you’re accepting applications from people looking for a job. Recruiting is the act of finding the very best person for a job and persuading them to stop doing what they’re doing and come join you.”
Way too many organizations just do process-driven hiring as a standard practice. HR staff tends to follow the same step-by-step procedure for each and every job opening, even when the talent required might vary greatly. They often hand out a job description with a dull laundry list of requirements and qualifications that attract mostly average or even desperate candidates. They may pass on a standout candidate because that person doesn’t have a certification that’s listed as required in the job description. Further, top-rate applicants will be turned off by the procrastination that often accompanies a standardized hiring process. Even when it’s critical to fill an open position, staff may take days or even weeks to review resumes, schedule interviews and make the offer. For a very desirable and highly-recruited candidate, this delay is unacceptable and sends the message that the company doesn’t really want them that badly.
Research shows that companies which achieve excellence in recruitment and talent management have significantly higher revenue growth and profit margins. Your hiring staff needs to understand that their success – or lack thereof – in attracting top talent goes directly to bottom line company results.
Conversely, executive recruitment is all about engaging a talented person and taking the necessary actions for that specific individual to get them to join your company. Recruiting is creating a strong connection that makes top tier candidates want to be part of your team. Executive recruitment requires a thoughtful and deliberate method of creating an opportunity that makes top talent willing to leave their existing position so they can join your organization. Recruitment is an ongoing activity that doesn’t just start when someone leaves your company. If you’re in that reactive hiring mode, you’re more likely to end up with an average hire, not top talent.
Executive recruiters, experts in the business, know how to win the war for talent. Do you?
