Professional Blogs #1 - The Times They Are a Changin

I left University in 2006, shortly afterwards the UK slid in to financial meltdown. Companies were struggling, unemployment was rife and even the large and iconic brands, like Woolworths, were disappearing. I was lucky enough to actually get a job during these dark times and started working for a procurement outsourcing company.  

At the time, Procurement was suffering from an image crisis. It was a reactive process, often marginalised within companies. It was seen as a function that either dictated to teams what they could or couldn’t do or were seen as responsible for large scale redundancies - all in the name of scrimping some savings year-on-year. Then the economic downturn occurred and the winds changed.

As companies all over the UK were not only forced to make savings, they were more importantly trying to continue to improve but with less money to do it. Forward thinking procurement teams and companies, such as the one I worked for saw these tough economic times as an opportunity for Procurement to really mature as a function and move from the periphery to the heart of a company. In short, procurement was growing in to a real strategic function. Rather than reacting to change it was becoming the driver for change in many organisations. Stakeholders changed from team managers to C-Level stakeholders and the best quickly showed that there was a lot of added value a modern Procurement function could offer a company. 

With this desire to do more with less, Procurement identified the opportunity, saw the value they could add and started disrupting the status quo. % Savings, while still important, became less important than the SLAs or service agreements with contracts and Supplier Management became more important than ever. Quality was finally taking centre stage, which took a large change in mind-set, not only within the stakeholder base, but also with the Procurement teams themselves, which is still going on today.  

 Yesterday I came across this post on LinkedIn:

What does that have to do with changes in Procurement, you may be asking? Well, when I left Procurement behind and moved in to Recruitment, the industry was at the start of a similar transformative journey that Procurement had been undertaking for the past few years. The days of recruiting in the above way are gone.

When over 50% of CEO’s believe talent and retention to be one of their main operational challenges over the coming years due to an aging workforce and economic uncertainty in the UK surrounding Brexit Recruitment has its opportunity to grow up and move in to a strategic function. Quality, Brand and candidate fit are the drivers behind this change.

Early adopters have already seized this mantle and many companies are moving back to building in-house recruitment teams. Within agency recruitment, candidate and client fit should be king. Recruitment is moving away from ‘filling roles’ and ticking off a laundry list of skills, to ensuring both candidates and clients are a good match, not only skills-wise, but also a match on culture, ambitions, work-life balance. This hopefully ensures that any hires have the maximum chance of providing a lengthy relationship between client and candidate.

To get this kind of understanding, the traditional method of “I have this job. 1. Are you any good 2. Do you want it?” are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Both candidates and recruiters seem to understand that they can have a mutually beneficial relationship; however this only comes through building trust and engaging over a longer period of time.

A good recruiter these days needs to be a great a project manager, a business analyst, a marketing specialist and recruiter, all in one go! Those kinds of skills don’t develop over night and when a large proportion of the recruitment industry was taught to recruit in the old school way, it takes a while for behaviours to change. Like I mentioned right at the start of the article, Procurement is around 10 years ahead of Procurement on this transformation and even it isn’t quite there yet, despite making great strides.

The above LinkedIn post is representative of quite a few that are shared across the network on a weekly basis. Horror stories of Recruiters not releasing information, treating the candidates like commodities and, in certain circumstances, even withholding client information unless candidates release info of where else they are applying! While these posts display a poor attitude, poor customer service and poor understanding of their own role; they are thankfully becoming rarer.

I almost feel sorry for the recruiters that post these status as they are clearly expecting everyone to agree with them and don’t understand why they are in the wrong. After all, this is how most of us were TAUGHT to do recruitment! While the industry drives forward, there is certainly a trickle down effect in terms of training.

Training the pro-active recruitment method is that it is hard to package in a nice A to B process that can be taught. It requires those learning the new method to be able to do more than simply follow a process and some scripted questions; successful Recruiters will have to be able to listen and react, research, analyse responses for intent and act on a more consultative basis. This will mean that as the industry moves forward, those who are unwilling, or unable, to adapt will be left behind. Those looking for those quick wins at the expense of the candidate will be forced to leave the industry as those driving forward will offer a much more valuable, efficient and enjoyable experience to both candidates and clients.

So, how does Recruitment become a true strategic function? Firstly, we have already started to see a similar shift within in-house Recruitment teams, as we did with Procurement. They are moving away from the fringes of a company, by showing senior stakeholders that an efficient and pro-active recruitment team can not only save money, but also has an impact on time to hire, quality of candidates and attrition rates, all while maintaining greater control over a business’ brand in the marketplace. This buy-in allows greater adherence within companies to the recruitment process, allowing for tighter control around the messages of brand and culture within a marketplace. It always amazes me that a company would spend years developing and cultivating a brand within the marketplace only to hand it over to someone who doesn’t understand it, let alone understand how their actions can negatively impact that brand.

Acting in a consultative way shouldn’t start once the resourcing phase begins, those truly successful teams are having input before a role is even signed-off. They are using their expertise and understanding of the talent landscape to advise management and shape roles and packages before a job spec is even a blink in the hiring managers’ eye. It is here that a good recruitment team can really come in to it’s own as a value-adding, strategic team.

Recruitment agencies are no exception. In order to be successful we HAVE to live and breathe our client’s culture as much as our own, we have an obligation to our clients to represent their brands correctly and an obligation to our candidates to understand their likes, dislikes and give them as much information about a client as possible, to ensure that they are going to be a good fit.

Like the new breed of internal teams, we need to ensure we are adding value as well as constantly driving down front-end costs, we need to work with our candidates to ensure that we are giving them the best chances of success, that we are providing them with the most suitable roles for THEM and not to those we think there is a chance of placing them, regardless of longevity and team fit.

Like the best internal teams, the best agencies should be looking to offer their expertise as early in the process as possible. Market Mapping is a great solution that allows a company to see just where the talent should come from, what the benchmarks are and what kind of activities are happening within that market.

As we enter a further period of economic uncertainly, the drive for efficiency will intensify and the opportunities to add value will continue to present themselves. Recruitment as an industry will continue to develop and modernise and provide better experience for candidates and drive value to clients. 

First published on LinkedIn  - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/times-changing-jonathan-evans