How to make sure recruiting is a valued line of business

How to make sure recruiting is a valued line of business

Thanks to the use of advanced recruiting tools and techniques, as well as better use of data and metrics, recruiters today can improve their profile or positioning within an organization.

Here are some key points to achieve this ambitious goal with each stakeholder.

Build trust with HR managers

It goes without saying that your relationship with HR managers is crucial for your recruiting success. However, there are some challenges that can lead to the relationship ending badly.

The first step is communication. If there is a lack of communication, it can lead to many problems. For example, some recruiters may have unrealistic expectations that great candidates will just fall into their laps. If recruiters don't work with HR managers, they might not be able to fulfill their roles properly, leading to a spiral of frustration.

Personal time with HR managers is essential in building trust, especially when you gain insights into recruiting trends, the availability of candidates based on roles and skills, and industry-wide salary data. With the help of data, you can also set expectations in terms of the time required for sourcing and filling each role. By collaborating on simple things like job postings, you can establish yourself as a trusted partner who can meet the needs of every HR manager.

Speak the language of finance

The finance department, which normally controls the budget for recruiting, is another important stakeholder. It is the task of the finance department to prioritize the distribution of financial resources throughout the company. When justifying and finalizing their budget for recruiting, it is up to the recruiters to "speak the same language".

The main challenge is that the ROI of recruiting is generally not expressed in financial terms, but rather seen as a long-term investment in human capital. The sales department can more readily predict the effect an individual will have on sales and thus justify a budget.

If recruiters are able to better conduct budget conversations in order to demonstrate the impact on personnel costs (the largest costs for a company), they can more easily close the gap for financing. By showing how quickly you can get people into the right roles (shortening time to hire) and optimize the matching process of candidates to open roles, you can control your recruiting costs and suggest a concrete model for improving productivity.

Use data to improve your negotiating position

Data can help you justify your recruiting budget - whether it's for better recruiting tools, more staff, or salaries. One way to show ROI is to measure how many touchpoints are required to make a single hire. You can model this for funding by multiplying the number of hires made per year by the number of messages sent, and then showing how much time is saved by using automated recruitment tools or subscriptions to improve productivity.

The next step is to calculate the "cost of the vacant position". Every day that a role is not filled has financial consequences for the organization. By looking at the estimated contribution of each employee's sales (which is even higher for technical professions), you can quantify the loss of revenue and the downstream productivity costs. If you fill a position much faster, these losses will be reduced and you can justify your budget - and build a better relationship with "Finance".

Show that your goals align with company goals

Providing the right data for the time to fill and the cost of a vacant position is precisely the type of analysis that is important to business leadership. If you accelerate the hiring of someone who can get a product to market faster and increase user growth by say 20-40 percent, you can quantify the impact on revenue. Recruiters should use this type of analysis to show how their operations align with the company's business goals and focus on an investment in human resources that yields measurable dividends. This is a value proposition that resonates with any leadership team.

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