The world of corporate recruiting and agency recruiting has become a secretarial task.  Retrieve resumes that fit the qualifications, forward to hiring managers, set up interviews?yada?yada..yada.  Is this really recruiting?  Do you really need a special talent to do that?  Sounds like a secretarial job to me. 

What are we really looking for?  Are we really looking for talent? Are recruiters and hiring managers even equipped to make hiring decisions?  How can we stop finding resumes and start finding talent?!!

It is true that recruiters are spending more time reading about their profession, getting continual education about hiring and interviewing processes and contributing within social circles such as Linkedin and ERE and others.  All this education, all this reading, only to here from your hiring manager, who has no formal or informal training, say, ?No, I did not like this candidate?

And you say, ?Well, okay, why Bob?  What is it that you did not like about him/her?

?I don?t know, just a feeling I have?.

I wonder if that feeling came from something Bob ate for lunch, or the phone call he just got from his spouse yelling at him because he forgot about Billy?s recital, or, that he just got a tongue lashing from his boss for missing a deadline.  Or, better yet, Bob thinks, ?hmm, this person is too good, he could do my job, HELL NO!?

Here are the questions that come up in my mind,

1.       Should organizations leave it up to hiring managers to make final hiring decisions?  Or, should it be a collective decision within the organization?

2.       Shouldn?t hiring managers receive some formal training for interviewing and selection processes?

3.       Why don?t more organizations train hiring managers on how to interview which would enable them to make better selections?

4.       Are we hiring Resume?s or People?

5.       Are we really searching for talent or are we just looking for resumes?

Let me go back to the beginning so I could try to make my point.  Let?s go way back.  I come from a poor background, child of immigrant parents that had no formal education or profession.  In high school I was not a particularly good student.  I did not do particularly well on my SAT?s and no college in their right mind would give me a second look, except of course community college.  I spent my first year in college basically majoring in ?Space?, and I do not mean astronomy, I mean ?taking up space?.  But something happened.  I met a man who told me that I had a special gift.  That gift was in recruiting and sourcing.  He believed that if I applied myself, that I could be one of the best, ever!!  To tell you the truth, I did not believe him at first, but it was great to have a fan, especially, when you spent your life in mediocrity.  I still remember his words, ?Kid, I am a head hunter, and you may not have much of a resume, but I know talent when I see it!!?

Well, in the hopes of not sounding like I am tooting my own horn, he was right.   I went into business with him and have billed millions upon millions of dollars.  Together, we will able to build a double digit multi- million dollar corporation and today we are a bi-costal organization, with over 40 recruiters and 400 contractors.  Today I can testify to you that it would have never happened if this man judged me based on my resume and did not care enough to see my talent.

In my years of experience, I have come to realize that ?Recruiters? really fall into two catagories:

1.       Recruiters (people who can find resumes)

2.       Talent Identifier  

I truly believe that most people, who are hard working, can communicate well and willing to be creative in their searching methodologies, can be good recruiters.  However, I also believe that not everyone can be a good ?Talent Identifier?.    Identifying talent is a unique skill.  Could you train someone to be a good Talent Identifier?  Maybe.  But I can tell you that this skill is drastically overlooked and tremendously underestimated.    There is so much emphasis placed on the ?perfect resume?, that the point of finding talented people to join your organization is lost.  Moreover, organizations are allowing hiring managers to make hiring decisions without any training or support.  The results are usually hiring decisions based on ?feelings? and other bias?s that they may have.    The skill of finding talent is rarely seen during interviewing by even skilled recruiters and even less by hiring managers. 

Caring enough about people is the main ingredient in identifying talent and it is rarely practiced.  As if interviewing with caring creates poor judgment.  Well, this is not entirely false, if you are only hiring because you feel ?sorry? for someone.  However, this is not what I am suggesting.  I argue that if you cared enough about people and who they are, you would be able to identify talent.

 I do have clients that are good hiring decision makers and more that are just really bad at it.  The good ones are usually excellent communicators that work closely with their team, hiring managers, collectively discuss candidates and care enough about people to attempt to identify talent during the interview process.  The less successful hiring practices are usually organizations that rely on one hiring manager, who hires solely based on feelings and resume.  Now, I do understand the relevance of a resume and interviewing.  I even understand the human nature of making decisions based on feelings.  But, is this really the best methodology for identifying talent.  As far as I am concerned, NO!!

Please don?t throw a stone at me after you read the next statement, but, if you ask me, anyone can be a recruiter.  It is no wonder that many recruiters fall into the profession by default.  To exacerbate this point, (again, please don?t send me any hate mail), there are only few recruiters around the country that are really good.  Most are not.  Some, because it is not their talent, but mostly because they fail to understand that the only way you can find talent is by truly caring about people.  Anyone can find resume?s.  The questions is can you challenge yourself to find killer talent for your company.  If you think you can, then it requires some major changes to company hiring philosophies and your resolve to really look for talented individuals based on a different measuring stick.    I continue to read many articles on this board that speak about the dysfunctional methodology of using resumes as a way to make hiring decisions.  In my opinion, most of the articles are pretty accurate.  However, I have yet to read an article regarding how corporate America is re-evaluating hiring strategies and how they intend to revolutionize the practice of recruitment and talent search. 

I do understand that I have not provided you with all of the practical solutions for Talent finding, other than caring, but don?t despair, I will write again.  Then again, why wait for me?  Why not be a pioneer!!!  Every industry evolves.  Isn?t it time for Corporate Recruiting to evolve.  I Challenge you to stop recruiting and start searching for talent!!!   But first you must understand the basic principle of talent finding.  Talent Identifying 101 - Searching for talent starts with caring about people.

Do you really care enough to find them?