Category Archives: Hiring

Career Confessions from Gen-Z: When You Get “Ghosted” by an Employer!

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Although I am referred to as the “Gen-Z expert”, I would not claim to be an expert on the dating practices of Gen-Z members. However, I am familiar with the concept of “ghosting”. If you aren’t familiar with this practice, here is the definition from Urban Dictionary: “To avoid someone until they get the picture and stop contacting you.” Pretty harsh, huh? Now, this is a classic example of young people just avoiding their problems and being too afraid to face them. But, we aren’t the only ones doing this!

My name is Cameron Sackett, and I have been ghosted by a potential employer.

Yes, I said it. I am only 19 years old and I have been a victim of ghosting.

Here’s how it works people. Let’s say you apply for a job and low and behold, they invite you in for an interview! Next, you go in for the interview and it goes really well and WOW, they offer you the job right on the spot! They say “oh, we’ll be in touch next week!”, and you leave feeling like you’re on Cloud 9. All of sudden, it’s next week and you hear nothing. You wait around and still nothing. Finally, you email them and they email back saying “some internal things are changing in the company, we’ll be in touch as soon as we can”. And you never hear back again.

This is what happened to me a few months ago. And it sucks. So, I’m here to say, don’t ghosts your candidates. Don’t fall into the easy trap of avoiding potential confrontation and just own up to it! Be honest with your candidates. If you can’t hire them anymore for whatever reason, let them know! Don’t just forget about them and leave them hanging, desperately yearning for an internship, so you can gain much needed experience to get other internships that will help you find a worthwhile job after you graduate (or at least in my case).

On the other side of the coin, don’t let yourself get ghosted. You may think that this is all because it was a shady company, but no! This happened to me at a perfectly well-respected company and I’m sure it does at plenty of others. If someone is offering you a position, get it in writing. I don’t care how you do it, but don’t fall into the same hole that I did.

Now, I’m not trying to call out anyone on this post because. Even though it made me upset, everything ended up working out and I’m all set for a summer internship at a different (better) company. I’m writing this for all of the hiring managers and recruiters out there who offered a position they can’t fill anymore. Also, I’m writing this for all of the candidates that were offered a job that they desperately need or want, but somehow disappears. Let’s lead the way and end job ghosting and hopefully, Gen-Z will follow suit and stop being assholes.

Editor’s Note (Yeah, Cam’s Dad) – So, I’m a Gen-Xer but clearly I was on this ‘ghosting’ thing way before my Gen-Z son – when I wrote this post –  The Reson You’re Being ‘Ghosted’ After Your Interview!  All the way back in March 2018! 😉 

This post was written by Cameron Sackett (not Tim) – you can probably tell because it lacks grammatical errors!

HR and TA Pros – have a question you would like to ask directly to a GenZ? Ask us in the comments and I’ll respond in an upcoming blog post right here on the project. Have some feedback for me? Again, please share in the comments and/or connect with me on LinkedIn.

The Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @HRmarketer now has Employer Brand Advocacy!

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On the Weekly Dose this week I review HRmarketer’s new Brand Advocacy product. If you don’t know who HRmarketer is they are someone you should probably take a look at. They were originally developed as a real-time data and HR industry insights product to help drive HR marketing and media relations campaigns, primarily for the HR vendor community to sell better to all of us (and they still do a great job at doing that!).

What HRmarketer found out over the past years was that they had built most of what an Employment Brand function would need to have a fully automated employee brand advocacy tool as well. Since they already built a brand advocacy tool for vendors, building one for employees was pretty similar with a few changes.

So, what the heck is an employee brand advocacy tool!?

Think of Employee Brand Advocacy the way you think about all those consumer brand you follow socially and love. One of my favorite brands is Nike. I follow them on Instagram, FB, Twitter, etc. If they share cool content, I tend to share a lot of that cool content with my followers. As you can imagine, Nike loves this kind of content share, because it’s coming from a fan.

Now, think about how you can use that with employees with your employer brand.

Not all of our employees love us. Some just like us, or they’re on the path to loving us! We all have a few employees that are truly in love with us! They love us, we love them! If you asked these employees to share some content with their networks, they would in a second! Without even asking why. Remember, they love you!

If you truly want to build and grow your employment brand, you need employee brand advocates! Now, you can do this manually and send a million emails asking for help, then send more emails showing them a piece of content to share, then hoping most will share. You can do that. It’s tough, and it’s hard to maintain.

This is where HRmarketer comes into play by automating the entire employee brand advocacy function for you! It’s like Employee Brand Advocacy on steroids!

What I like about HRmarketer’s Employer Brand Advocacy program:

– It’s priced to get people to test it! You don’t pay by the size of your company, you pay by the number of advocates that use the program. So, you can start small with one group and see how it works, then, as you prove the value, you can expand where you need it. (HR vendors should take note, this is a great pricing model).

– Super easy to create as many employee groups as you want. By skill, by location, by demographics, by hiring a manager, etc. Want more female referrals? Just create a group of all of your female employee brand ambassadors and have this group share content and job openings with their network.

– Advocates don’t have to live inside the platform. Once it’s set up and permissions approved, email reminders of new content go directly to your ambassadors who can then pick and choose what content they share and how they share it. You can also set up mobile and desktop notifications as well for new content.

– It measures the analytics so you have real data on the effectiveness of various content you share. Plus, you can also see which advocates are having the most impact, and figure out how can you leverage these employee ambassadors even more, or even set up rewards.

I’m a gigantic fan of this technology!

If you’re running a large TA shop, an employee brand advocacy program is a must. If you want to do it really well, employee brand advocacy automation is a must. HRmarketer made this platform super easy to use, you don’t have to be techy to use it, and they made it cost effective to test and show your organization the value.

So, I tell you to demo a lot. I know, I love tech and I geek out about this stuff, but this is one you really need to demo if you want to start an employee brand ambassador program, or just have interest in what and how other organizations are using these programs to expand their employment brand. Just demo it, you’ll see!

The Weekly Dose – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

Want help with your HR & TA Tech company – send me a message about my HR Tech Advisory Board experience.

Career Confessions from Gen-Z: What Social Media Should You Use to Recruit Gen-Z?

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Like my Gen-Z counterparts, social media has been a part of my life from a very young age. Unlike many of my fellow Gen-Zer’s, I may have less Twitter followers than one of my parents, but I like to think my knowledge of social media is up with the rest of them.

Social media branding can be a make or break asset for companies. Too much advertising can make you seem old-school or unapproachable, but too little activity will make you seem irrelevant. It is absolutely vital to create a brand through social media in order to appeal to Gen-Z. Here’s the lowdown on each major social media platform and how to use them for the greatest success:

  1. Twitter: Twitter allows for the greatest interaction between you and your potential employees. I recommend to maintain a large and active Twitter presence and do your best to interact with people or current events/trends, rather than posting only ads about your company. (Look at Wendy’s Twitter interactions for an example).
  2. Facebook: While Facebook’s influence is still the largest of all other platforms, Gen-Z is not the most active on this site. We may all have profiles, but we are not as active on this as other sites, like Twitter and Instagram. I would keep a steadily active presence, but focus your Gen-Z branding efforts on the other platforms.
  3. Instagram: This one is tricky. Although it’s my favorite social media site, the little interactivity amongst users makes it difficult to recruit. I would focus your video content here since Instagram and Instagram stories are widely used for short video clips and it is an easy way to find a Gen-Z following.
  4. Snapchat: All I have to say is STAY AWAY. Please do NOT try and recruit people on Snapchat. Not only is it awkward, it is not the place people go to in order to look for a job. The only feature that is usable for recruiting efforts is the stories feature, and I would recommend using this on Instagram instead.
  5. YouTube: Like I said in my last article, go crazy on YouTube. Get that video content going and go share it on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter etc. Utilize YouTube to the best of your ability and it may result in big success.

While I may not know a lot about HR, I know a lot about social media and Gen-Z. Social media can seem very daunting, but all it takes is a little effort and a little personality. Try to be different. It will be evident if you are making an attempt to brand yourself over social media and Gen-Z will realize that. We’re not all social media crazed monsters like our parents want you to believe. I promise.

Let me know what you think about social media branding in the comments! What’s working for you? What isn’t!? 

My New Favorite Interview Question!

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I love the concept of questions that will truly show you who someone is. We’ve gone through a long history of asking basic interview questions that don’t really get to the heart of anything. “So, Timmy, tell me what you would like to be doing three years from now?” Okay, well, sitting on a beach drinking margaritas sounds better than this. How am I doing? Did I get the job?

For my interview questions, I really want to understand how someone thinks. What are their true motivations? What gets them up in the morning? It might not be the job I have, in fact, I hope it’s not the job I have because that would be depressing. I don’t get up in the morning for the job I have, I get up because I’m a grown-ass man with a responsibility to take care of my family. I really like my job, but my job is not my motivation.

So, what’s my new favorite interview question? It’s simply this:

So, with the latest data scandal at Facebook, did you delete your Facebook account? 

I ask, then I shut up and wait for an answer.

What am I looking for? I’m looking for people who aren’t so naive and fragile that a data breach on a free platform that they willingly signed up for wouldn’t cause them to freak out.

I’m looking for candidates who would go, “no, why would I?” They would describe the process of signing up for Facebook, knowing they were getting value out of something they never paid a dime to use, and knowing that came with a cost. That cost? It’s your data.

I’ll tell you, that isn’t the only right answer. The other answer I would accept is, “Yes, I did, and I also deleted LinkedIn, Instagram, SnapChat, Twitter, etc. I deleted these because I was tired of using free platforms that I know manipulated me and take my data, and I finally got to a point where I didn’t want that to happen any longer.”

Either answer, I would be good with. Both answers show me that the candidate has a pretty good head on their shoulders to understand how the real world works.  The same kind of head my grandparents had. No one gives you a free lunch. If you’re getting a free lunch, there is an expectation that you’ll be giving the person paying something, eventually.

If the candidate did delete their Facebook profile, then went right out to Twitter to announce it, then, well, that’s an answer to. It’s not the answer I’m looking for in a candidate I want working for me. I don’t need employees who are shocked by the basic realities of life. It was free, but it cost billions of dollars to make. How do you think they’re paying for it?

Oh, I just love the perfect interview question! Designed correctly, it can give you such great insight to an individual! So, what’s your favorite interview question?

 

Career Confessions from GenZ: Are You Recruiting Me on YouTube?

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In the past few years, I have developed a new obsession: gymnastics. I have gone full on gymnastics crazy. I watch all of the meets I can and often will go the Michigan Women’s gymnastics meets alone because I don’t want the distraction of having to entertain a friend! Although I don’t exactly know the root of my obsession, I know what has been aiding it: YouTube.

YouTube has become a driving force in the lives of Gen-Z. A new statistic came out recently that over 70% of Gen-Z watches 2 hours of YouTube videos a day. Also, in a survey of teenagers, 97% said they use YouTube which was almost 30% more than Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat.

In my opinion, YouTube is the most diversified of all media platforms. There is something interesting for literally everyone in the world. For example, there’s a whole community of people that post entire gymnastics meets so I can watch them over and over (or so I can watch them on mute during class….).

In order to recruit Gen-Z candidates, I’d argue that YouTube is the way to go.

Not only are you statistically going to reach more of us, but you are going to hold more of our attention due to the nature of the platform. Most of the ads on YouTube are videos and often you can’t close them until at least 5 seconds have passed. I can describe many more YouTube ads than I can of any other platforms.

Another appealing characteristic of YouTube is the ability to appeal to a certain audience. Since YouTube has a wide array of channels and videos, it is easy to target a certain audience by finding the videos they watch. While I don’t really know what audience will try to reach me through gymnastics videos, you can probably find some computer programmers through gaming channels.

I think that YouTube should be the go-to media platform for recruiting.

There is a difference in uses of YouTube amongst generations. While my parents may only be using YouTube to watch the occasional viral video (my current fav is Fergie’s National Anthem), Gen-Z sees it as a place to interact with people of common interests over video content. And we all know how Gen-Z loves our video content. I encourage everyone to go on YouTube and get lost for awhile, and then you’ll see the appeal it has to us Gen-Zer’s.

This post was written by Cameron Sackett (not Tim) – you can probably tell because it lacks grammatical errors!

HR and TA Pros – have a question you would like to ask directly to a GenZ? Ask us in the comments and I’ll respond in an upcoming blog post right here on the project. Have some feedback for me? Again, please share in the comments and/or connect with me on LinkedIn.

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @MontageTalent – The Better Candidate Experience

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This week on the Weekly Dose I review the interview and hiring platform Montage. Montage was started as one of those technologies that filled in some of the huge gaps that most ATS systems just didn’t address. It’s easiest to think of them as an interview platform, but over the last few years, they’ve really grown beyond that.

Montage is an enterprise level TA technology that is looking to transform how you initially interact with candidates. They work with your ATS as an integration. Montage does both on-demand types of things: text-based screening, automated recorded-voice screening, on-demand video interviews, and integrated assessments. They also do live screening and interview related activities, from scheduling and event management, to live video interviewing and the ability to do things like live coding screens (134 different languages) and whiteboard exercises.

Montage is not a low-end video-only type of interview platform, this is the real deal, that does just about everything you would ever need when it comes to screening and interviewing candidates.

What I like about Montage: 

– They’ve integrated some A.I. functionality that gives recruiters an ‘assistant’ to help schedule multiple interviews/screens with candidates and hiring managers without the recruiter having to get involved beyond the initial request.

– Built for both high volume hiring with on-demand text screening, and highly specialized recruiting with interview screen sharing and whiteboard exercises available to recruiters and hiring managers.

– The platform is built to give your organization the ability to set up the process how you want it. Want one position to have an on-demand, timed video interview, great, you can do that. Another position to have a text screen, another position to have an untimed assessment, and video, and yet another to have an essay and a coding example. You can basically do anything and everything with the platform. Quite frankly, you have so many options it’s a bit overwhelming when you first look at it!

– Recruiter dashboard allows you to compare candidates and see manager feedback. You can also set up auto-reminders for both managers and candidates that will keep going until completion.

– Mobile optimized to the point that hiring managers are using the mobile functionality to consume video and other content from the platform about 85% of the time, and can respond via mobile as well with their feedback.

Montage really defines what a screening and interview platform should be like for an enterprise-level organization. You need all the bells and whistles, you need a complete ability to configure how you want, and you need the ultimate flexibility that you control. This is not a plug and play just take it off the shelf kind of product. Montage works with your team to really help you design and understand the power of the platform and all the positions you hire.

If you are hiring thousands of employees per year, across multiple disciplines, and multiple countries, Montage could a great tool for your organization to make you more efficient, deliver a better candidate experience, and increase your quality of hire. Well worth a demo. Be prepared to see a lot, because the system can do a lot. The platform definitely has the ability to transform the way you hire.

The Weekly Dose – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

How to be an Adult! An Employer’s Edition

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Don’t buy into the hype! “Oh, just do what you love!” That’s not being an adult, that’s being a moron! Just do what makes you happy! No, that’s what a child does.

“Tim, we just want to hire some ‘adults’!” I hear this statement from a lot of CEOs I talk with currently!

That means most of the people they are hiring, aren’t considered adults by these leaders. Oh, they fit the demographic of being an adult from an age perspective, but they still act like children!

I tell people when I interview them and they ask about our culture I say, “We hire adults”.

That means we hire people into positions where they are responsible for something. Because we hire adults, they take responsibility for what they are responsible for. If I have to tell them to do their jobs, they’re not adults, they’re children. We don’t employee children.

I think about 70% of the positions that are open in the world could have the same title –

“Wanted: Adults”.

Those who read that and got it, could instantly be hired and they would be above average employees for you! Those who read it and didn’t understand, are part of the wonder of natural selection.

How do you be an Adult?

– You do the stuff you say you’re going to do. Not just the stuff you like, but all the stuff.

– You follow the rules that are important to follow for society to run well. Do I drive the speed limit every single time? No. Do I come to work when my employer says I need to be there? Yes.

– You assume positive intent on most things. For the most part, people will want to help you, just as you want to help others. Sometimes you run into an asshole.

– You understand that the world is more than just you and your desires.

– You speak up for what is right when you can. It’s easy to say you can always speak up for what is right, but then you wouldn’t be thinking like an adult.

– You try and help those who can’t help themselves. Who can’t, not who won’t.

My parents and grandparents would call this common sense, but I don’t think ‘being an adult’ is common sense anymore. Common sense, to be common, has to be done by most. Being an adult doesn’t seem to be very common lately!

So, you want to hire some adults? I think this starts with us recognizing that being an adult is now a skill in 2018. A very valuable skill. Need to fill a position, maybe we start by first finding adults, then determining do we need these adults to have certain skills, or can we teach adults those skills!

The key to great hiring in today’s world is not about attracting the right skills, it’s about attracting adults who aren’t just willing to work, but understand the value of work and individuals who value being an adult.

I don’t see this as a negative. I see it as an opportunity for organizations who understand this concept. We hire adults first, skills second. Organizations that do this, will be the organizations that win.

The Motley Fool has a great section in their employee handbook that talks about being an adult:

“We are careful to hire amazing people. Our goal is to unleash you to perform at your peak and stay out of your way. We don’t have lots of rules and policies here by design. You are an amazing adult and we trust you to carve your own path, set your own priorities, and ask for help when you need it.”

You are an amazing ‘adult’ and we trust you…

If only it was so simple!

The Weekly Dose of HR Tech: Foresight – Workforce Planning Tech

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Today on the Weekly Dose I review workforce planning technology, Foresight.Foresight is billed as the world’s first Recruitment Forecasting technology.It creates an accurate forecast of hiring need across a specified tactical time frame.

About once a year I’m completely shocked and surprised by a technology and this is the case with Foresight. I told the Foresight team, and I’ll tell you, this is the most impressive piece of HR Technology I’ve seen in a long time!

Foresight was built by some corporate talent acquisition professionals that got sick and tired of putting out fires. What we know if TA has very little control over workforce forecasting it comes from hiring managers, CFOs, CEOs, etc. So, they built a technology that kept that in mind, and got them out of fighting the recruiting fires of ‘we need to hire 100 engineers in thirty days’, ‘oh, wait, we need to layoff 300 now instead’, ‘check that, hire 1,000 total across all functions’!

What I like about Foresight:

– The platform sends out an internal email to each hiring manager from the executive explaining what needs to take place, and takes them into the systems and walks them through a very short forecasting process (15 min.) set of questions (executive can also speak to the team via video as well).

– The process takes them through the main areas of: headcount planning, known active recruiting, potential growth needs, and interns/apprenticeships. Calculates everything in a roll-up, and gives the organization a predicted recruitment path for the next twelve months.

– Hiring managers have to follow the system, they can’t skip steps or change. They can leave comments to explain, but they have to put in something.

– Executives get updates on hiring managers not completely their forecast.

– The platform works off live, real-time data, as a position gets filled, everything is updated, someone leaves, another update. Real current recruitment needs are at your fingertips, across your entire organization. Update forecasts can be sent out monthly, quarterly, up to the organization.

– After hiring manager puts in the forecast, there is an approval roll-up that takes place, so when it all comes back to TA, the department is ready to go with full approval.

Basically, anyone in the organization, from TA leader to hiring managers, to executives, can get a list of every single role being recruited for and when that role needs to be filled.

I’m in love with this from the simplicity of how it works to how if used consistently it becomes a cultural driver around your talent strategy. Everyone is onboard and in the know of what’s going on. Clearly, this is an enterprise level technology. You probably don’t need forecasting tech if you’re hiring 100 employees a year, but 500-100,000 hires, across multiple locations and countries, you need this.

Well worth a demo if you find yourself in a very typical TA role of constantly starting and stopping, and not really having a great idea around what the organization needs to hire on an ongoing basis. Bad TA happens when you can’t get out of firefighting mode. Great TA happens when you have a plan and can go make real long-term strategies to attract great talent.

The Weekly Dose – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

Career Confessions from GenZ: Are you Pre-boarding Interns?

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College orientation was one of the most uncomfortable and awkward experiences of my life. I would say that most other current college students would attest to this. I think it’s very unreasonable to expect a group of 18-year-olds to meet for the first time and become friends in a short time span while learning everything you’re supposed to know about the school you are attending.

Thankfully I am through the college orientation process, but I have a lifetime of job orientations ahead of me. Apparently, this process in the workforce is called “onboarding” (thanks, Dad!), but to newbies like me, we invented a new term to describe this orientation called “pre-boarding”.

This new style of onboarding is a more in-depth look into general ideas about the workforce in addition to normal onboarding events. This is for people that have never worked real-life jobs before (yup, that’s me). I like this idea of pre-boarding because I am a very curious person that has a million questions and likes them all to be answered! So, here are some specific topics that I want companies to focus on while pre-boarding newbies like me:

  1. Dress Code: For someone that has always put a heavy emphasis on what I wear, this is very important to me and other young people. The words “business casual” mean absolutely nothing to me. I need concrete examples of what to wear and this means VISUALS.  I want someone to show me pictures or even show me real-life examples of what I should be wearing every day to work. Please and thank you.
  2. Logistics: I’m calling this section logistics because it encompasses a whole array of logistical things. I need to know where to park, where to sit, when I eat, where I eat, where’s the bathroom, when I’m supposed to arrive, when I’m supposed to leave, among many other things. And I would like a concrete answer to all of these. Coming from a school environment, like most newbies are, we are always told when to do things and how to do them. Therefore, it is important to realize this and adhere to how your new employees have been given information for most of their lives.
  3. Job-related content: This part of the pre-boarding process should be different for every job because it has to do with the specific duties and tasks that new employees will be performing. This can include things like meeting your fellow team members, learning how to use certain software or programs, and other instructional demonstrations as needed (you guys already know how to do this part). Will I have a laptop, desktop, no computer, no desk? Should I bring my own laptop? What about my phone, you know I’m not going anywhere without that!? 

I’m sure I’m forgetting a million other things that are important, but these are just things that I specifically worry about. For this pre-boarding process, it is extremely important to leave all questions unanswered. Gen-Z (and young people across history) DON’T ask questions, so it is important to make sure you think of everything beforehand. This process will help alleviate pressure from your new employee and will warrant an easy and successful transition into their new position.

Here’s to hoping that my future bosses will be reading this post to make it easier for me!

 

HR and TA Pros – have a question you would like to ask directly to a GenZ? Ask us in the comments and I’ll have Cameron respond in an upcoming blog post right here on the project. Have some feedback for Cameron? Again, please share in the comments and/or connect with him on LinkedIn.

 

The One Word Recruiters Use to Describe Themselves That’s a Lie!

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Did you catch the article on LinkedIn by Lydia Abbot, The Top 10 Words Recruiters Use to Describe Themselves? If not, go check it out. Lydia is a content marketer for LinkedIn and she puts out some good stuff based on inside data LI data.

In this piece, she basically gave us the Top 10 words recruiters use to describe themselves (based on LI data):

I’ve been a recruiter for a long or worked in talent acquisition for a long time. I think I would say most of these words are pretty good. I want my recruiters to be experienced, skilled, passionate, motivated, etc.

The number 1 word is “Specialized”, it’s also the number 1 word that recruiters describe themselves, that’s almost always a lie!

“Specialized” isn’t really a word recruiters want to use to describe themselves. It’s the word that “You” want them to use to describe themselves!

Here’s what happens. You have a super important opening to fill. The leader of that group wants to ensure ‘you’ don’t screw it up. Since you don’t have anyone on your team that ‘specializes’ in the function of this position, she wants you to use an outside firm. A recruiter who ‘specializes’ in the function of this position.

The reality is, there are a few actual recruiters who “specialize” in certain functions. My friend, Stacy Zapar specializes in filling corporate Recruiter positions at The Talent Agency. That’s all she works on. I know a guy in North Carolina who specializes in filling PCB Engineering openings in the Aerospace industry. Those are the only positions he works on, period. That’s specialization.

If you fill “IT” openings or you fill “Accounting” openings. You aren’t a specialist. You don’t have specialization.

Recruiters will tell you they are specialized because that is what you want to believe, but 99% of recruiters are not specialized. They might enjoy a certain focus, like Nursing, or Engineering, or Designers, etc. But those are still very broad fields!

Corporate Hiring Managers and Corporate Talent Acquisition want to believe the recruiters they are using, or the recruiters they are hiring, are specialized, but they’re not. It’s not that they’re lying, it’s that it doesn’t really matter!

My company mostly works on recruiting positions in Engineering and IT. The reality is we train our recruiters to “Recruit”. Give them an engineering opening and they’ll kill it. Give them a Human Resources position to fill and they’ll kill it. If you can recruit, you can recruit.

Does specialization help? It can, if the recruiter is truly specialized. If you have a pipeline of very specific talent. The reality is less than 1% of recruiters will ever even come close to true specialization, yet it’s the #1 word we use to describe ourselves!

So, what do you really want out of a recruiter if we don’t need specialization? Experience for sure helps. The reality is the best recruiters take an interest in the position, the hiring manager, the department, and the company. They’re passionate about the position and can convey that to candidates. Also, they have the skill to uncover and track down talent others can’t.

In recruiting, specialization is oversold and overrated. Whereas actual sourcing and recruiting skills are underrated because we as recruiters do a terrible job of showing how a skilled recruiter is better than an unskilled recruiter!