There are a couple of recent posts that had me thinking about this topic. It started with a comment posted at one of KD’s entries. The next was an entry by Tim Tolan. Both had me considering…when should I, as an internal recruiter, give an external search partner access to my hiring manager?
My first thought was NEVER, you Scurvy Cur! This is MY hiring manager and you will do all things through me!
But, in reality…this isn’t how it works, nor should it be. What’s the point of working with a third party recruiter if all I am going to do is babysit them through the process? If I am reviewing every resume you send, why aren’t I just doing the job myself? Still…as an HR partner, I need to be involved. Not because I don’t trust the TPR (at least, usually not because I don’t trust the TPR), but because I need to make sure our processes are being followed.
I guess my role here would be more like the third wheel. The big brother who’s making sure you’re the right guy for my sister. After all, no matter how many times I have heard how a third party person has just the right candidate for my team, and how you know the industry backwards and forwards, the fact of the matter is, I know my client better than you do. We’ve been together for 4 years, you just got here.
So, before letting my client get into your Honda Civic with the spoiler on the back, I’ll want to have a little conversation. Don’t worry, I won’t bring my shotgun. Typically, this conversation will be around our processes. Being that I work for a huge company, our rules are many. And, you need to know them because we get in trouble if you break them. I’ll also give you any info about the team that may help. A common piece of knowledge is, “He says he will consider someone without practical game design experience, but reality is that he has not interviewed a single person that didn’t have it.”
Then…I’ll proceed with setting up a meeting with the hiring manager and let you take it from there. But, like the annoying big brother, I will be omnipresent. Not because I want to check your work, but because I want to make sure all our steps are being followed. The more you do on the recruiting side, the more time I have to focus on other positions. But, if you’ve forgotten to attach your interview notes, I’ll be following up to collect.
Now, just so you are aware, there is a time when contact with the hiring manager will abruptly end. As the in-house recruiting partner, I am also the bearer of bad news, to both candidates and TPRs. People don’t like giving bad news. But, HR does, right? If a hiring manager has decided that they have not seen anything good from a TPR, they will frequently ping me to let that partner know that they’re done talking to you. That’s right, much like a wronged girlfriend, a hiring manager will frequently have someone else tell you it’s over. So…keep that in mind before sending over the recent college graduates for our position that required 5+ years experience.
Like Tim said…we need to work together. This means all three of us. Exclusivity with the hiring manager won’t happen. But, we can still have a successful partnership.
Jason.
I don’t want you or anyone else to think I’m being pejorative with my post, so please don’t take any of this personally. when should I, as an internal recruiter, give an external search partner access to my hiring manager? I don’t personally wait for anyone to provide me with access to prospects. Maybe in places such as and similar to Microsoft there are hiring managers who are so well disciplined that even in light of massive project constraints they will refer all service providers to HR. I call such companies “sources.”
This is a classic debate between freedom and order. It can be observed in myriad transactions and most notably in political theory (capitalism is to freedom and socialism is to order, for example). So long as markets exist (free or otherwise) – though presently our government is trying to eliminate them – there will always be a tug-of-war between the opposing sides. You represent order (rules, process, policy, authority) and I represent freedom (efficiency, speed, providing the antidote to pain). This dichotomy will never be resolved. The pendulum will simply swing.
Thanks for the comment, Todd.
I like your analogy. I probably am a little socialistic as an HR partner, which you would find ironic if you knew me outside of work.
I don’t know if it’s a matter of disciple or just the fact that, at the end of the day, it’s easier for our HMs to follow the process. If the HM connects the agency to recruiting at the beginning of the process, we get all the necessary paperwork, contracts, etc out of the way. We can quickly start interviews with prospects. Even if they try to go around HR, our processes don’t allow them to move forward with any interviews before doing so. No offer can be made without going through the proper interview channels. So, again…it’s just easier to follow the process.
I want to reiterate…I don’t stop people from working directly with the hiring manager. In a perfect TPR scenario, I see myself as little more than an admin until we get closer to the offer stage. But with all the rules that are in place, whether they are mandated by the government or they are internal corporate rules (Diversity, procedures around internal candidates) we can’t trust an external person to know everything involved. If processes aren’t followed and we end up with an unhappy candidate or employee, it’s the not the TPR that has to answer for it. It’s the company.
Jason, I found it odd for Todd not to want to work with you,against you and your comapany’s process. I am a diverse attorney and lobbyist recruiter. I do not possess to know the corporate rules and proceedures of my client’s HR department. I want to know the HR recruiter and I want them to trust me. Trust is the operative word and that is something that is done over time. Relationships are not built on the spur of the moment of a candidate walking into our offices. Even if there is not a open opportunitity, a external recruiter, should have a relationship with you and call you with a possible candidate or if the relationship is solid be able to call the hiring manager and be in touch with the in house/internal recruiter at the same time. The bottom line is to fullfill your hiring manager’s opening,where all parties are part of the winning team! Thanks for your blog, is is appreciated.
Peace,
Ron Jordan
http://www.diverseattorney.org
@9:58 – Note, I didn’t write that I do not want to work with Jason or any other corporate recruiter. Additionally, I am a strong proponent of trust-based relationships. To illustrate my point, I’ll draw on an example I’ve previously used here. Assume you take a bad fall and painfully discover a compound fracture coming from where you know your left (or right) femur to be. At this point in time you don’t really care about your destination – the place to which you were previously walking. You care for only a handful of things, the most important of which is something to make the agonizing pain go away. Out of no where appears a doctor who, as luck would have it, has a syringe filled with fresh morphine. Would you A) tell him to jam the needle in to the nearest vein RIGHT NOW!!! or B) tell him you’d like him to first call your family doctor to make sure it’s ok for you to have morphine? After all, your family doctor once chided you for not taking all of your antibiotics the last time you had strep throat; as a matter of practice, he needs to be aware of any and all pharmaceuticals you take. So, which is it? Morphine shot – pain goes away…OR call your family doctor and hope he calls you back before that morphine gets up and takes a job with your competitor?
Jason, I read your post a couple times and I agree with where you’re coming from. Personally, I prefer to keep HR appraised (as surprises serve nobody well), however, I also try to avoid scenarios where HR will not allow me to speak with the Hiring Manager. There are many TPR trainers who suggest avoiding HR altogether . . . and trust me I’ve had moments where I wish I had. However, I’ve also had moments where my relationship with the Internal Recruiter meant the difference in the Client understanding that all objections (regarding candidates) are not grounded or legitimate.
There are TPRs out there who will threaten potential Clients by saying that they’re nothing more than a “Source” if we don’t get exactly what we want as TPRs’. To each his own, but I would recommend TPRs hesitate from using threats to earn business. It’s not always cut and dry, and it sounds like I’m taking the high road here, but I’m not. I’m simply saying that when someone threatens me, we’re off on the wrong foot from jump street.
See, IMHO, ‘us-versus-them’ groupthink is the major issue here — on both sides. I hope we can continue to overcome this latent Cold-War.
I think that this is the most interesting and thought provoking post that I’ve read in a long while – thankyou. I don’t think that I’m disagreeing with you because from reading your post it looks like you are adding value to the whole process. I’ve been an external recruiter for quite a long time and have seen this transition from the days when we dealt exclusively with the hiring manager and HR / recruitment function were literally not involved at all, to today’s norm – along the lines you describe.
The biggest issue that I’ve seen is where an employer outsources the recruitment process / admin / gatekeeping to a “specialist” RPO company. Whilst I expect this can work it frequently doesn’t and sucks value out of the process. These RPO people frequently don’t know the hiring manager at all (whereas maybe the relationship between hiring manager / external recruiter goes back years), yet they insist on being the conduit through which all communication flows and yet they are unable to answer even the simplest question. So in that case the RPO becomes a layer of cost which is adding no value and just increasing the chances of misunderstanding between hiring manager and external recruiter.