I am amazed by the number of HR leaders that don’t get recruiting. I respect that not everyone has experienced the pleasure, and periodic pain, of being a recruiter or leading a recruiting function. If you have not, stop looking for the easy road to results. Recruiting done right is not easy!

Many recruiting functions make a significant bottom-line impact to their organization. The ones that do have done the heavy lifting to transform recruiting from an administrative reactionary paper-pushing state to a highly strategic high-tech and high-touch function. There’s no big red button to press to fix recruiting.   

Recently I’ve been in multiple conversations with recruiting leaders with bosses that “don’t see the value” or “don’t have time” to implement an employee referral program. The concepts of an effective employee referral program are easy.  Committing the time, resources, and creativity to make a significant shift in your sourcing strategies and recruiter behaviors can be difficult. Who decided “easy” was the default path to success? 

I have had several flat-out scary conversations this month with recruiting leaders that work in organizations where “leadership” believes you should blindly outsource recruiting because “it will be easier.” Easier? Are you kidding me? Who said recruiting was going to be easy?

There are times where outsourcing recruiting may be the right answer. It’s never the first answer. It should never be because it takes effort to retain your recruiting staff and deal with volatile volume. It should only be implemented when extensive analysis validates the positive long-term impact on business results. That’s not easy.

Top notch recruiting is not for the faint of heart. I don’t believe that highly specialized recruiting in a competitive market is easy. I don’t pretend that high volume, high turnover, non-exempt recruiting is easy to manage. I do believe that the right recruiting leader, with the right attitude, and the right leadership support will always make a significant bottom line impact.

If recruiting was easy, anyone could do it!