Today’s recruitment consultant has a strategic role to play in business as “the representation of a talent pool”, according to Adam Hawkins, head of sales – search and staffing industry vertical, talent solutions – EMEA & LATAM, of LinkedIn.

That role is in contrast to that of the in-house talent acquisition specialist, who is an adviser, Hawkins says, but “very much focused on more of a narrow pillar which is, how does my business show up in the market? How does it authentically engage with talent and on the skill profile that’s needed now and in the future?

“It’s their job to articulate to the business that if we want to be competitive,” Hawkins goes on to say, an organisation must be able to demonstrate who and what they are “or we need to change processes”.

Hawkins spoke with Recruiter recently at the launch of LinkedIn’s ‘The Future of Recruiting 2023’ report (see News story). “When I look at the role of the recruiter, that’s more of a strategic role because they are the representation of a talent pool as opposed to a talent pipeline, a pipeline being a group of people that map to my current and future skills needs.

“When you’re looking at that whole talent pool itself, I think you have to represent the market and you know, for most recruiters now, the world is more borderless than ever before. They have to have an aggregated view of trends overall for currency and they have to lead with the insights. They have to look at skills and talent flows. They’re in a unique position.”