If people in your company shake their heads and their eyes glaze over when you mention ‘search and selection tools’ – or any other specialist recruitment term – why not take a leaf out of the book of Samantha Ramsay, fashion retailer House of Fraser’s head of resourcing and employer brand? 

“If I am talking to the business about selection and assessment tools, it’s a bit like gobbledygook, and they don’t understand,” Ramsay told Recruiter. 

After one manager reacted by telling her ‘I don’t know what you’re on about, I just want you to find me someone’, Ramsay knew it was time to act. “We changed the terminology specifically for our business so they understood what we were trying to achieve,” she explained. 

‘Sourcing’ and ‘attraction’ were swapped out in favour of ‘shop front’ and other terms that those in retail instinctively understand. Similarly, ‘assessment and selection’ became ‘browse and choose’; onboarding, meanwhile, is now called ‘buy and collect’.

Ramsay said changing the terminology means that recruiters now “talk in terms that the business can understand, and they have a frame of reference to help them understand what we are trying to do”. 

• For more on how Ramsay’s innovative approach is changing the face of resourcing at House of Fraser, see The Big Story in July's Recruiter, out today.