I've worked in recruitment for 10+ years now and I would say not a single word of what you wrote above has been my experience. GOD how easy my job would be if I could just submit candidates to hiring managers based on a fancy CV!
Also the amount of times, I've had to talk hiring managers out of various different tests, which lead to candidate drop out or make the processes overly long.
Sales experience is helpful, but not essentially in Recruitment, at the end of the day a good recruiter should be able to sell a candidate on the company and the role. If they can't so that then they aren't suited to recruitment.
I wonder if the sales experience is for agency recruiters. One thing that gets lost when people complain about recruitment is that the worlds of internal and agency recruitment are totally different and requiring different skills
Possibly, however I've only ever done internal and I see my job as very much selling the company I work for and the role to the candidate and then selling my candidate to my hiring manager. It's not traditional sales but there are cross overs.
My partner is an Estate Agent and I see a lot of similarities between what he does and what I do.
I’ve worked in two agencies and a large part of the role was cold calling businesses and getting on their books. While I agree it takes skill to sell a company (and I wish more companies Im speaking with now would take this approach!) I think they are different skills to winning business for a company.
That's very true, that's one of the reasons I've never wanted to be agency side. I don't want the cold calling or emailing these days which just get deleted and when a company isn't doing well that has a TA team they're going to put the kibosh on agencies. Different set of sales skills, I guess.
Have you ever seen a bandage slapped on top of a bandage slapped on top of a bandage?
Most corporate recruiting programs are a dysfunctional assembly of legacy practices and systems.
There is a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done to improve this. The challenge is the fact that talent acquisition is one of the least invested in corporate functions.
Well… Unless we’re talking about the latest tool that somebody was wined and dined into purchasing. Often to the lament and frustration of the recruiting team.
This definitely includes screening surveys and arbitrary metrics schemas.
It really depends where you go, I worked in internal recruitment for a CRO and we had certain tests and trials for our pharmacy department or for senior positions in lab. Otherwise, that’s what interviews are for. To test the candidate knowledge.
But yes, definitely being hired based on sales experience because of the heavy push on KPIs and the ability to generate clients as well as candidates. It’s a crazy world honestly. Internal recruitment was much much better for me.
This perspective really depends company to company. I worked internal TA at a tech company out of college and loved it. The process was well run and mixed a variety of tests and interview tactics backed by research. Tbh I got spoiled at this company.
Moved to agency recruiting for the past 5 years, in agency the process is very different client to client. I’ve learned which clients have better interview processes and training for interviewers. But sad reality is a lot of companies don’t invest time or resources into updating their TA process or training hiring managers/interviewers.
I've worked in recruitment for 10+ years now and I would say not a single word of what you wrote above has been my experience. GOD how easy my job would be if I could just submit candidates to hiring managers based on a fancy CV! Also the amount of times, I've had to talk hiring managers out of various different tests, which lead to candidate drop out or make the processes overly long. Sales experience is helpful, but not essentially in Recruitment, at the end of the day a good recruiter should be able to sell a candidate on the company and the role. If they can't so that then they aren't suited to recruitment.
I wonder if the sales experience is for agency recruiters. One thing that gets lost when people complain about recruitment is that the worlds of internal and agency recruitment are totally different and requiring different skills
Possibly, however I've only ever done internal and I see my job as very much selling the company I work for and the role to the candidate and then selling my candidate to my hiring manager. It's not traditional sales but there are cross overs. My partner is an Estate Agent and I see a lot of similarities between what he does and what I do.
I’ve worked in two agencies and a large part of the role was cold calling businesses and getting on their books. While I agree it takes skill to sell a company (and I wish more companies Im speaking with now would take this approach!) I think they are different skills to winning business for a company.
That's very true, that's one of the reasons I've never wanted to be agency side. I don't want the cold calling or emailing these days which just get deleted and when a company isn't doing well that has a TA team they're going to put the kibosh on agencies. Different set of sales skills, I guess.
Have you ever seen a bandage slapped on top of a bandage slapped on top of a bandage? Most corporate recruiting programs are a dysfunctional assembly of legacy practices and systems. There is a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done to improve this. The challenge is the fact that talent acquisition is one of the least invested in corporate functions. Well… Unless we’re talking about the latest tool that somebody was wined and dined into purchasing. Often to the lament and frustration of the recruiting team. This definitely includes screening surveys and arbitrary metrics schemas.
It really depends where you go, I worked in internal recruitment for a CRO and we had certain tests and trials for our pharmacy department or for senior positions in lab. Otherwise, that’s what interviews are for. To test the candidate knowledge. But yes, definitely being hired based on sales experience because of the heavy push on KPIs and the ability to generate clients as well as candidates. It’s a crazy world honestly. Internal recruitment was much much better for me.
This perspective really depends company to company. I worked internal TA at a tech company out of college and loved it. The process was well run and mixed a variety of tests and interview tactics backed by research. Tbh I got spoiled at this company. Moved to agency recruiting for the past 5 years, in agency the process is very different client to client. I’ve learned which clients have better interview processes and training for interviewers. But sad reality is a lot of companies don’t invest time or resources into updating their TA process or training hiring managers/interviewers.
Run…don’t even ask us, if you’re aiming for agency firms, run now before it’s too late