How to Best Partner with Recruiters, Internally and Externally

With the economy picking up in 2015, it will be crucial to stay on top of recruiting to ensure that you are getting the top candidates in your industry.

On top of all of the other duties required by today’s HR professional, recruiting is becoming a viable role to procure the next generation of leaders for your organization. To do this, you may have to look to outside resources to help with the sourcing of talent. Recruiting today is seen as a commodity, a value-added service, to a company’s long list of expenses. You may be in a positon where you have to plead your case to get management on board to utilizing this type of premium service. Here are a few tips on working with recruiters both internally and externally:

For those of you whose company is large enough that you are able to employ your own internal recruiters, congratulations! You have overcome one major hurdle! It is still crucial that this person (or persons) is seen as a crucial member of the HR team. Communication in this area is key. The recruiter needs to be in constant contact from the initial request for sourcing a particular position all the way through the offer stage. Continual feedback from the hiring manager goes hand in hand with the communication piece. At times (and I’m not pointing any fingers; you know who you are!), the hiring manager will try and “take over” the process. Again, if a company is fortunate enough to have internal recruiters, let them do their job. They will not leave you out of key steps in the process, but the system can get bogged down very quickly if there are too many hands in the pot and you could lose a key candidate. Keep the lines of communication open and let the recruiters do their job!

For those of you who have to look to external resources to fill certain roles, the same rules apply! Communication is even more critical when the person is not sitting directly across the hall from you. From the initial stages of setting expectations with the firm, setting up key next steps at each phase of the hiring, to giving constant and extremely clear feedback, having that open line of communication is vital to the hiring success. Recruiters only know the things about your company that you share with them, so you need to have open and honest conversations about key expectations for the role they are trying to fill, company culture and personalities the individual will be working with.

It’s a great feeling to know that you are finally in a position where you are able to hire again! Congratulations! Just make sure you are taking the correct steps when starting the search for that perfect employee. They are out there; you just need to have clear objectives and work closely with the recruiters, both internally and externally, to know you’ve found the right match! Good luck!

Holly Ewart counsels clients in the areas of Executive Search, Organizational Developments, Executive Coaching and Career Transition for OI Global Partners – Innovative Career Consulting (Denver & Cincinnati).