A future ERE Corporate Leadership Journal (not yet out) will include an article about what HR leaders should be doing NOW to plan for the hiring of recruiters during the recovery.

John Zappe, the article's author, asked several members of our industry to respond to a series of questions (and then extracted contrasting points of view). I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product.

I was among those asked to contribute and, here is the unabridged answer I provided to one of the questions (which will, of course, be edited and combined with others in the final article):

Q: (John) What should employers look for in recruiting and in hiring recruiters? (In economic recoveries of the past, many employers simply hired entry-level HR staff and assigned them to jobs that needed doing, including recruiting. Or they reassigned generalists to the task. Is this likely to happen again? Should it? And if not, then what traits, skills, and knowledge, specifically, should HR leaders seek in their recruiter candidates?

A: (Gerry) The basic functions of recruiting: sourcing leads, finding prospects, screening candidates, selecting from a final slate and closing the chosen candidate can be taught.

The challenges are time to practice, clarity of the process, discipline to repeat, feedback loops and appropriate rewards.

Recruiting leaders ramping up their hiring on the other side of the recession need to decide on the balance of "functional" expertise (knowledge, skill and experience) they'll need and then clearly describe it.

The critical difference today versus 5, 10, 20 years ago is that the "design" elements of recruiting- the form that follows the function is now front and center.

It is the in-depth knowledge of how your firm's employment "brand" is embedded in every conversation, online and off that will make one recruiter so much more successful than another.

It is how today's recruiter handles each of the silver medalists to maximize their future utility or ensures that each and every candidate who applies gets a respectful response at every stage of the opening.

It is the attention to the experience of every stakeholder- the employee who made a referral, the hiring manager who is networked but stressed out, the recruiting leader who has to do more with less and that jobseeker that differentiates a mechanistic technician from an innovative professional.

This shift in emphasis is essential even though we seldom spent the time and effort to dig out and assess the quality of the experience in the past.

If anyone thinks entry-level HR professionals (who are typically undecided about the recruiting function) are going to replace dedicated staffing pros and succeed in driving a hiring process aligned to the company's business...then I've got a bridge you'll want to buy.

Take a look at ERE's Journal. I find it offers interesting value