In the minds of recruiters, there is no such thing as an average recruiter. I can safely say this without surveying the herd of opinionated, self assured, confident, and sometimes arrogant people we meet in this business because it is not just an opinion held by the members of this profession. Research shows that the tendency to overestimate personal worth is a pretty common theme. People that are asked to place themselves on a normal distribution curve on just about any topic tend is to overestimate their capabilities relative to the “norm.†One study showed that 95% of the faculty of a major university considered themselves “above average in teaching ability†and 68% placed their teaching abilities in the top 25%. So what is the measure of a recruiter’s ability? Drilling down to basics, it is mostly about being a value added to the process.
Is it about interviewing ability? That would depend on the circumstances. Obviously someone needs to ferret out the best among the throngs that apply. Those that are experts in the area may have a big picture solution about the involvement of a recruiter in the interview process, but it really boils down to the capabilities of the management team to select the right candidate. My personal experience as an in-house corporate recruiter led me to believe that my value added was to insert myself into the interview cycle to offset bias and orchestrate a balanced assessment of a candidate. My external (out-house?) experience has also showed me the value of bonding with a candidate to facilitate communication and guiding them through the process. The key would seem to be answering the question, “Am I a value added by doing this?†If yes, then do it! If not, then don’t.
I have told my personal story before of interviewing for a recruiting manager position at one high tech company years ago. One director level manager spent about 45 minutes of the 60 we had scheduled together talking to me about himself. Then he looked at his watch, opened a desk drawer, pulled out a stack of paper and said, “Well, I guess I have to ask you these damn behavioral interview questions that HR wants me to use.†I was suddenly no longer interested in the job. They really needed someone to be a value added, but the culture was one of a total lack of respect for HR that would have been difficult to overcome single handedly. Had I been more hungry at the time my career could have ended there… butting heads with people that didn’t care.
I had been totally immersed in the Targeted Selection® behavioral interviewing methods published by DDI and found that behavioral interviewing techniques worked well, but other methods work too. The fact is that left to their own devices managers will ask non-work related questions or “manhole cover†mind puzzles to try to find some flicker of fit in a candidate. Regardless of the interview technique used, adding value happens by instilling some form of consistency in the process. Statistics show that an organized approach can make better hires. This means that the recruiter has the choice to either restructure the process or offset the damage done otherwise. If past performance has a 55% correlation to future performance in behavioral interviewing, this is only slightly better than a 50-50 coin toss. If interviewers are not trained and the process is random, there is really no need to interview at all.
When Ed Koch was mayor of New York City he was famous for going all around town asking, “How am I doing?†Recruiters should be asking, “How am I adding value?â€
Â
Image credit: citalliance / 123RF Stock Photo