Consultants? Pah!
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In-House Hannah on - Which adds more value, a recruiter or my BlackBerry?
I’m a typically demanding in-house recruiter. I am also a particularly good recruiter who stands no nonsense from my adorable line managers or the creatures known as ‘Recruitment Agencies who call themselves Consultants’. Consultants — pah! Most of them couldn’t consult their way out of a paper bag, but more about that at a later date.
Having just started as an in-house recruiter in the European recruitment team of a US company I’m busy getting to grips with the suppliers they use. Oh joy of joys — not! Most are unfamiliar to me, which was not surprising considering I have joined a totally new industry.
So how does the well-networked recruiter get to know their suppliers? A bit of research, of course. From experience I know that finding their websites, if they have them, is a waste of time, so straight to LinkedIn.
As I was cutting and pasting names into the search engine I thought I might as well add them to the address book on my beautiful BlackBerry phone. The best thing about the latest versions is that you can add photos too, so that you can see who is ringing you as well as hear. So cool — I love it, and so handy when you are meeting your supplier for the first time — or as a focus of hate if they are pestering you with yet another rubbish candidate.
I pasted in the name at the top of the list into the LinkedIn search engine. Result! A hit first time and the company matched too. There was also a decent summary of the person and the company as well. I think I could work with this person, she sounded very professional. A bit of cut and paste, and the contact card was almost complete. Drag and drop — brilliant! A photo too.
Now I was on a roll, so on to the next name. No name matches. “That’s odd,” I thought, “why wouldn’t a recruiter be listed on LinkedIn?” Everyone who is anyone is. So on to the next name — a hit. Oh no! A dormant account showing two contacts and an obviously out-of-date profile. So on to the next one, and the next and the next. I was absolutely amazed; out of 37 names on the preferred supplier list (PSL), seven had no profile at all and a further nine had obviously dormant profiles. Very few of the profiles had more than a few hundred contacts.
This was a list of what were supposed to be the best recruiters in the industry; the suppliers who were to provide me and my lovely hiring
managers with the best candidates. Yet some 40% were obviously not networking. I worked out that the 37 PSL contacts were linked directly
to less than 1,000 people. I am personally linked to over 5,000! Yet I am being asked to pay money for these people to find me candidates. How does that work? Where is the value to me? Perhaps one of the socalled ‘consultants’ could explain to me why I need to pay them when they are obviously taking me for a ride?
Now that I have started my new job, you won’t be surprised to read that I am working with my manager to review the PSL, and the company is giving me a new BlackBerry.
What do you think? Tell us at recruiter.editorial@centaur.co.uk
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Readers' comments (16)
Anonymous | Fri, 4 Sep 2009 3:10 pm
Am I the only person who does not get this? It's lame and I want that 5 minutes of my life back.
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Nick Walrond, Managing Director, Resource Solution | Sat, 5 Sep 2009 8:18 am
I sympathise with your observation that too many recruiters call themselves “consultants” but act as “agents”. However, I disagree wholly with your interpretation of networking and with your method of research. How are you able to draw inferences about recruiters without ever meeting them? If we take your comments literally then any recruiter with a network of less than 5,000 is “taking you for a ride”. Really?! I worry that your feelings are shared by other in-house recruiters born into the business in an age of faceless internet contact which does not reflect a true business networking relationship. How effective is a network of 5000? Can any individual really profess to have a business relationship with 5000 individuals? Surely this is a symptom of the Facebook generation where collecting connections with people you have never spoken to, met, or engaged with at a deeper level somehow gives you credibility?
Let’s take the definition of business networking. For me it is the process of establishing a mutually beneficial relationship with potential clients and candidates. The key to this is the word “relationship” (definition: a particular type of connection existing between people having dealings with each other). Can you truly profess to having a relationship with all your 5000 connections? I suspect that if you can then you are not using your time effectively.
So how big should a good recruitment consultant’s network be? I would say that anyone within a network should be engaged with at least once every three months, developing a relationship over a number of years (and having periods of more active contact when opportunity presents itself to both parties). As a consequence is it possible to be truly effective with a network of over 500-1000 true business contacts?
Therefore Hannah I advise you to meet with your chosen recruitment partners, establish a relationship with them, ask them how they network – and pray that they do not tell you they simply connect to people on Linked In, but that they speak, meet and build relationships with the people your business wants to hire in advance of you having demand – also find out how long they have been recruiting for? Can a true business network be built up over 6-12 months? To add real value to your business you need to speak to recruitment consultants who have developed their relationships with their network and know their candidates well, knowledge is power in recruitment and it is only by encouraging this that you will receive back a true consultancy service. Oh, and by the way, find out if your procurement department have made it impossible to deliver true recruitment consultancy by driving the rates and margins through the floor.
In short, LinkedIn is an amazing business tool of the new generation, but does not replace proper relationship building through regular and often mutually beneficial contact. Some of the best recruiters still use a “black book” and shy away from the faceless openness of social networking sites. That does not make them bad recruiters, and the only way you will be able to tell this is by building a mutually beneficial relationship with them yourself!
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Gareth Jones | Wed, 9 Sep 2009 9:17 am
If you ignore the rather overblown sense of self importance and arrogance in the narrative (which does no one in the industry any good, including in house recruiters) there is a very important message here for recruiters. The results do not surprise me and it is indicative of the 'head in the sand' mentality of the industry as a whole.
This kind of debate needs more airtime in publications like this.
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Peter Gold | Wed, 9 Sep 2009 10:12 am
Valid points well made but, why bother with anymore for your PSL?
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Pete Babble | Wed, 9 Sep 2009 10:17 am
Everything you write smacks of the power hungry, failed recruiter profile of so many in-house recruiters. I don't disagree that there are bucket loads of bad recruiters out there but your whole approach is wrong from day one. You'll never get the best talent (at the best price) from the market.
Sorry, but I bet you're doing something different within 12 months .... and let's face it - if you were any good you wouldn't be in-house!
Pete
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claire owen | Wed, 9 Sep 2009 9:24 pm
A recruitment consultant could, like you, be linked to 5,000 people, but surely what you are paying for, if you were dealing with an agency that is a specialist in it's sector and has been around for a good few years, in our case 16, is access to in excess of 100,000 candidates that are specialist in a chosen field. LinkedIn does have a role to play in recruitment, but I do think it's a bit hasty to make a judgement as to a consultant’s capability to deliver great candidates based purely on their LinkedIn connections. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.....
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Martin McDonald | Tue, 15 Sep 2009 5:25 pm
I'm an in-house recruiter with previous agency experience. While I can appreciate the frustrations the author of this article has with some agencies, the tone of this article isn't helpful. The ooohing and aaaahing about having a Blackberry is especially embarrassing.
Having seen both sides of the marketplace over the last eight and a half years, I have some pretty strong views on agency and in-house recruitment. Pete's comments above are typical of the self-obsessed, short sighted hubris many of us have come to despise with agencies.
However, it's time for a full and frank debate between in-house and agency recruiters, and this should be the perfect vehicle. Perhaps some RPO people might want to contribute as well...
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Still lost in the paper bag... | Wed, 16 Sep 2009 2:18 pm
Just searched LinkedIn for 'In-House Hannah' and nothing came up...
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Dean | Thu, 17 Sep 2009 3:55 pm
You call LinkedIn networking? Ha! Funniest thing I've heard all day. I bet you think a good recruiter is the one with the most job ads advertised on a job board as well.
Recruiters have been placing candidates long before job boards or social networking sites such as LinkedIn have existed. If anything, the use of these sites is nothing more than a cop out for recruiters that are either too lazy or incapable of doing things properly (and that goes for in-house recruiters too.)
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Anonymous | Fri, 18 Sep 2009 5:29 pm
Hannah,
It is incredibly easy to build a network on LinkedIn in excess of over 5,000 people. There are a few groups to join etc etc and once you've waited a few months you would have more than several thousand. But what value does that network truly have? Most of the people in these groups are only interested in increasing their LinkedIn count, not using it productively. Let's face it, out of your PSL of 37, probably 36 of them have access to Monster with its millions of CVs. If you're only interested in the number of contacts these agencies have, then why not just cut your PSL down to one of them who has access to Monster? I suspect this would not produce great results though.
As a headhunter, I am not in the least bit concerned about how many people I have access to via LinkedIn, my own database or any other online tool / database. I'm interested in finding the right people for the assignments I'm given. LinkedIn has several million users but if I only search on LinkedIn, I only have access to the people who have been bothered to post a profile, keep it up to date, and have been nice enough to include a few key words for me to search on. Using traditional search methods, I have access to the complete market with no discrimination to those who have or have not got a LinkedIn profile. Only by searching the whole market can I be sure of finding the right candidate.
There is no doubt that LinkedIn is a useful tool, as are many other social media and networking sites but certainly they are not the be-all and end-all and most definitely they should not be used to judge the level of ability of a firm's ability to find you the right candidates.
As an ex-recruiter, you will also understand the value it brings to be open, honest and communicative with the people and companies who are there to help you.
Enjoy...
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