Volume recruiting. The bane of the recruiting experience. I don’t care how good you are as a recruiting professional, until you’ve put on the flame suit and sat in a volume recruiting chair, you’ll never be able to fully appreciate the job – OR the people who successfully DO the job.
Like your mailbox, you can clear it out every day, but it’s going to be full again tomorrow. The only difference is that candidate submissions don’t take holidays. You want to see a stressed out recruiter, talk to them after a week of PTO – like a phantom limb, they can still feel the sensation of applications building up in their absence.
The reason for the volume is, of course, the nature of the positions for which they recruit. Non-exempt positions are more transactional, have lesser requirements in education and experience, and (surprise!) pay less than exempt level roles. They also make up the brunt of the workforce, handle a ton of the customer experience, and like it or not – they can make or break you.
Check out the rest over at HR Hardball (an FOT contributor blog).
John Whitaker (“Whit”) is a SVP and Chief People Officer at Sage Dental and the founder of HRHardball.com (2008). He specializes in building and developing strong recruiting teams who are unafraid of “kicking the ant pile.” Like most Texans, he loves to tell a story (especially those that include an armadillo or a poker game) and cutting through the chaff…don’t take it personal.