“Full-lifecycle recruiter” is a misnomer, inferring a finite lifecycle limited to talent identification through the new hire onboarding process. Let me explain below. But first, some numbers.
- Nearly 78 percent of candidates say the overall experience they have during the interview process is an indication of how the company values its employees (CareerBuilder, Candidate Experience from End-to-End, 2017)
- More than 58 percent of people with a negative impression of a company from a prior experience say they will not apply to that company in the future. (IBM, The Far-Reaching Impact of Candidate Experience, 2017)
- 92 percent would consider leaving their current job if offered a job by a company with an excellent corporate reputation (Corporate Responsibility magazine, 9/2015)
The Pursuit of Career Growth Is Causing Attrition
Consider also:
- The No. 1 reason that people change jobs is career opportunity (LinkedIn, Global Talent Trends, 2015)
- 87 percent of millennials rate professional career growth and development opportunities as important to them in a job (Gallup, 2016)
- 26 percent of applications are coming from internal hires, and internal hiring is deemed 6x more effective than external hiring. (Jobvite 2017 Recruiting Funnel Benchmark Report)
If we sit back and depend upon employees to seek out and apply to the occasional internal job, if we are not concertedly cultivating and encouraging the behavior making it a core componence of our corporate culture, the small percentage of internal hires will not change.
The value of the internal hire is tremendous.
- They have already demonstrated cultural fit and possess the knowledge and experience that comes with tenure.
- Cross-functional transition strengthens the awareness and interactions between internal departments.
- Facilitating internal movement demonstrates a commitment to growth and affords employees options as they envision their career path within the organization.
- Observing real people transition, grow, and become role models within the organization gives others confidence that this can become reality for them too.
A Better Name
Recruiting requires continuous transformation. There has been a lot of buzz about recruiters being salespeople, as well as about recruitment marketing. But sales and marketing methodologies are not new competencies; rather, they are skills that have always been embedded in the core transactions that top recruiters manage. The ability to develop a trusted relationship, uncover, and align the mutual needs that benefit two parties, engage and sustain interest over time are the core foundations of candidate engagement and hiring management.
Like I said, “Full-Lifecycle Recruiter” is a misnomer; Total Talent Management would be a more appropriate label. Stopping at onboarding is inadequate. In a traditional organization, once a person is onboarded, the role of training and talent management falls exclusively to the hiring manager and in some cases a learning and development team lends support. Unfortunately, these critical responsibilities can be secondary to other core responsibilities of their jobs and unintentionally get deprioritized. Technologies for talent management and succession planning abound, but without a concerted effort to communicate, oversee, identify, and continue to engage high-potential employees in understanding what opportunities are available for them, inevitably those individuals are going to have a wandering eye.
A Total Talent Management Recruiter Is Involved Across the Full-life Cycle of Employment — Not Just Hiring
Support succession planning. Align with the business to identify and engage high potentials to help them understand the value proposition of growth within the organization. The Total Talent Management Recruiter possesses skills to manage and grow the internal workforce while hiring to compliment skill gaps.
- Cultivate relationships with current employees to aspire to and pursue growth and internal development; educate them on the value of pursuing a career path within the company
- Cultivate relationships with the hiring managers to influence how they view the internal workforce and to ensure the behavior of conducting internal workforce assessments is paramount in hiring practices
When cultivating internal career growth becomes your cultural norm, the need to seek career development elsewhere diminishes, therefore improving employee retention and satisfaction. Success is in the details.