It's Time to Feed the Good Recruiters

It's easy to tear down an industry or profession because of a vocal or infamous minority. To complain in public forums and throw recruiting assumptions at such easy targets. I'm going to ask you to do something that's not easy. But first, some backstory.

A few years (and a few lifetimes) ago, I started to tweet a shout-out to my favorite recruiters on Fridays. Partly because I was still getting to know Twitter and was naive enough to think I could start another "Follow Friday" type movement, which was big back then. Also, because I was just starting to fall in love with the profession that I accidentally backed into in June of 2004. It sounds really weird when I say that out loud. I have been in recruiting for twelve years now. And I never thought I would be a recruiter.

In fact, every single person I have met over the last decade who has shared their "how I got into recruiting" story with me, didn't seek it out either. I was a self-taught web design consultant and marketer who applied to a web design job online. I had no idea that the job was working for the recruiting agency who posted the requisition. Within two weeks, I was sourcing prospects for their clients' roles and launching recruitment marketing campaigns. Recruiting found me.

In each of the five companies where I've worked, there have been recruiters-in-name-only, and there have been good recruiters. There have even been great recruiters. The simplest differences between the good and the great that I've seen, is desire and conviction.  The desire to understand people, to truly build relationships and be excellent at your job. Isn't that what we really want in a recruiter - someone to go beyond the filling-a-seat transactional mentality?

The second critical thing is the conviction to follow through with the tasks needed to meet that desire. We all get busy. We all have lives outside of work. And likely we all go from meeting to meeting at work, with little time left in the day to execute on the work that we promise.

Whether we are balancing budgets or interview schedules, aren't these the two things that differentiate most of us in each of our professions?

I challenge you.

I challenge you to feed those two things in each good recruiter that you find. When you see good behavior, feed it. Thank them for their efforts. Thank them for researching the role and your background and treating you like a person. Don’t you want the candidate experience to be like that for yourself when you're applying to jobs?

Tell their manager. Tell your colleagues and your friends about your good experience with that recruiter. Help us change the standards and expectations associated with recruiting.

I'm going to keep feeding the tweet stream with my Favorite Recruiter Friday [#FRFriday] tweets, lifting up the good people that I see contribute to our profession. Naturally, I'm going to talk about the people I work with, but also reach beyond the recruiters that my team supports inside Indeed. To everyone who touches and influences recruiting to improve the candidate experience in a positive way. Because applying for jobs takes courage, and we owe our applicants some respect.

Time to ask yourself. Which behavior are you going to feed?

_____________________________________________

Bryan Chaney is a global talent sourcing and attraction strategist. He’s worked at IBM, Twilio and currently leads employment brand for corporate recruitment at Indeed. Bryan has worked in recruitment, technology, and marketing, providing him insights into the marketing of hiring, the importance of technology and the buying process that candidates make when applying for jobs. He’s an international speaker and trainer on the topic of recruitment and talent branding and loves to travel. The Huffington Post recently named him one of the Top 100 Most Social HR Experts on Twitter. That and FiveBucks will get him a delicious cuppa coffee.