In one of the more unbalanced blogs I’ve read on Forbes.com, Josh Bersin espouses the attributes of LinkedIn and how the company is effectively disrupting the corporate recruiting market. (Read first.) It’s a good piece, Josh, but there’s another side of the coin.
Doesn’t this all sound strangely familiar? It should. Anyone who has been around the recruiting game longer than five minutes heard how “disruptive” Monster was going to be – until it wasn’t. There’s always some whiz-bang, slick, shiny and sparkly new-fangled gizmogadgetwidget that’s completely going to change how companies recruit. And it’s cool for a while until everyone once again realizes the only thing that really matters in the recruiting process is the people.
A skilled carpenter can work with mediocre tools and still produce quality work. But give a layperson the most expensive tools money can buy and, well, I bet you’d be disappointed. Could there be a more appropriate analogy?
In the spirit of full disclosure, I love LinkedIn and I’ve used their LinkedIn Recruiter product with varying degrees of success. I think it’s probably one of the greatest passive candidate sourcing tools ever created – albeit by accident. But even as Bersin sings the praises of LinkedIn, there are some real deficiencies we shouldn’t ignore.
So let’s balance the scales a little, shall we?
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Sourcing (Sort of)
First, there’s a huge difference between hiring a contract recruiter and engaging the retained services of Korn/Ferry or Heidrick & Struggles. But I digress. Certainly, LinkedIn allows access to a greater network of potential candidates. But all the grass isn’t greener. To be found on LinkedIn, one must first BE on LinkedIn. And even if one is on LinkedIn, a good amount of member profiles are incomplete, causing sourcers to overlook suitable candidates. I once gave a talk on social media to a class of prospective MBAs at Loyola University Maryland’s Joseph A. Sellinger School of Business. When asked how many of them were active LinkedIn users, only a few raised their hands. Yet every hand in the room reached for the sky when similarly asked about Facebook.
But we’ll talk about that in a minute.
LinkedIn also seems to boast a potent concentration of high earners. Based on 2008 data, 28% of LinkedIn users had average annual incomes of ~$104K, 30% made an average of $93K. I doubt the data has changed significantly over the last few years. So, if you are looking to hire executives or high-techies (the highly compensated) then LinkedIn is a great source. My construction worker dad probably would consider it some sort of insult to have a LinkedIn profile. In the end, LinkedIn is a great source for certain kinds of positions, but it is not “the answer” in every situation. It really depends on your company and the kinds of people you recruit the most.
People
As the carpenter analogy above goes, all the shiny new tools in the world won’t matter if you don’t have the right people, and this is where technology falls flat. Companies do not recruit people. People recruit people. Where candidates choose to spend most of their days is as much an emotional decision as it is a logical one and the first people they connect with at a company (its recruiters and hiring managers) make all the difference. I’ve always said that if you wouldn’t put your recruiters in front of your best customer, then you’ve got the wrong recruiters. Often, corporate recruiting functions lie buried deep within the HR infrastructure and staffed with generalists who do recruiting as part of their overall HR responsibilities. I would argue that professional recruiters do not share the same DNA as traditional HR practitioners – and most HR practitioners I’ve spoken with about this would agree. LinkedIn Recruiter in the hands of anything less than a professional is akin to a shiny new skill saw in the hands of my teenage daughter. As soon as she turns it on, she’s likely to do more damage than good. Unless an organization is willing to ante up and hire professional recruiters, tools like LinkedIn Recruiter will be underutilized and those part-time recruiters could end up damaging your organization’s employment brand.
LinkedIn is Not Facebook
You are darn tootin’ it’s not Facebook. Do you know how much a single seat for LinkedIn Recruiter runs these days? Not to mention the additional expense of their Job Postings, Employment Branding services, and Talent Pipeline features – great if you have deep pockets. Recruiting on Facebook is significantly less expensive (at least for now) and platforms like BeKnown and BranchOut look to unseat LinkedIn as the professional network of choice. Let’s also look at the relative size of these social networks. By the numbers, there are approximately 150M total users (not all active) on LinkedIn, while Facebook boasts an active user population of almost 850M users (December 2011).
No one would argue that LinkedIn is very different from Facebook. But ask any professional recruiter and they’ll tell you Facebook has great potential – most are just trying to figure out the best ways to leverage recruiting on Facebook as its usability as a recruiting platform is relatively new. There’s no question that LinkedIn is a great tool – but it isn’t the only tool and others shouldn’t be ignored.
Side Two
Bersin states that “the hottest part of this market is tools for sourcing.” While that may be true, finding the names is (arguably) the easy part. What you do after you know where your target candidate is and how to reach them – that’s the real recruiting difference. It’s where you win or lose. No technology in the world can replace how a candidate feels the first time he or she interacts with a human from your company.
So before we get everyone fired up and on the LinkedIn bandwagon, let’s understand that a truly “disruptive” strategy is one that focuses on having the right people in place to take full advantage of tools like LinkedIn Recruiter, Facebook, and so many more. Like we used to say in the Corps when a Marine would (rarely) miss his or her target. “It is not the rifle. It’ is the Marine.” The best people paired with the best tools provide the best results.
A great person can be successful even without the best tools. But a mediocre person with the best and most expensive tools is still….well…mediocre.
Thoughts?
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Bill Fitzgearld
February 29, 2012 4:37 PMI continue to find it interesting that the focus remains on tools that help with “search” or “sourcing.” That’s really all Linked In does. Granted, it makes it easier but it leaves me asking – What if people could easily “find” great opportunities? What if you could defragment a very fragmented recruiting marketplace? Now that would be “disruptive!” I think recruiters tend to think of themselves as always being central to the recruiting process. If 60% to 70% of a recruiter’s time is spent “searching,” figure out how to drive that time out of the process. Companies want the best candidate they can hire to show up on their doorstep when they need them – figure out how to make that happen!
Brenden Wright
February 29, 2012 8:35 PMBill,
Thanks for the insight, contribution, and engagement. You make some great points. The JIT model for recruiting is the coveted “holy grail”. Certainly something to strive for.
Brenden
Cahviezel
March 1, 2012 3:01 AMHarry, I aolpogize but I couldn’t disagree more with your contention that recruitment and retention are separate. In the recruiting process, you mention that line managers take over the on-boarding and orientation and that may be accurate but the recruiter will also never have a successful hire until the candidate has been integrated in the organization. If the new hire is released before their probation period ends, then you haven’t properly identified what the hiring manager wanted in the first place. I realize I’m being simplistic and that there are examples of hidden flaws that lead to dismissal but the statement generally holds true, even moreso when the turnover rate increases.As for retention being a different process, I’ll go as far as saying that the tools used to retain employees are the same tools used to bring them into the organization. As well, there has to be a reason for losing any employee. It may simply be from external circumstances such as a need to relocate for family reasons. However, when an employee is lost due to internal circumstances, those circumstances should be made known to the recruiter.Here’s an example: an employee best described as hard working but socially withdrawn may not be able to handle a high energy environment where the manager may occasionally vent frustrations. The manager may derive maximum efforts from everyone else in his team so firing them won’t be the solution but making sure you recruit someone who can work in that environment would be. Part of the retention process would be to conduct exit interviews and determine the above circumstances.
Bill Fitzgearld
March 7, 2012 8:44 PMThis doesn’t sound like a problem with recruiting or a problem with retention. It’s a leadership problem and HR, as much as they would like to think otherwise, can’t make the necessary decisions to prevent this from happening again in the future. If it really mattered and was a high enough priority, do you think this would be allowed to continue? That seems to be the most critical question here that needs to be asked.