Recruiting, particularly by in-house recruiters, has become a very strategic business function, according to Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD) chief executive Peter Cheese.

He spoke to Recruiter following a talk he gave at a recent London HR Connection event in which he talked about the future of HR as a business function, and as a profession.

He told Recruiter of all the HR functions, recruitment was the easiest to measure the contribution and value of.

“You can measure on a cost basis, which has often been the obsession… the real thing about recruitment is its effectiveness, which points to its value… that is a very measurable thing.”

He said it should be measured on how long new recruits stay in the organisation and what their contribution to the organisation is over time.

Those measurements are putting more emphasis on other areas of recruitment, “particularly how you recruit on things like attitude, and not just technical competence” which is what makes recruitment more of a strategic role, he added.

Earlier in the evening, he told the audience of HR professionals that their industry needs to be professionalised, needs better recognition of skills and needs to be taken more seriously by the people who work in it.

“And I certainly acknowledge the CIPD has got a better job [to do] of enabling all that sort of stuff.”

HR, as a profession, he said, needs to “step up” and part of that comes down to education and “keeping ourselves current, treating ourselves as professionals”.

He encouraged those in the room to talk to their contemporaries about skills, qualifications and learning.

“We cannot have a profession made out of people that ended up in it.”