7 Signs Your (Internal) Recruiter Sucks

Business is good. Customer base is growing. Sales team is working hard bringing in new business. The questions keeping you up at night are now, “Can we find the people to deliver our product on time.” Maybe your sales and operations team doesn’t know it, but you know it. If everything in the sales pipeline hits, you have an entirely new problem. You can’t fill the order because you might not have the people to deliver it. The Recruiting team you’ve assembled is paid to step up when your sales team has successfully identified and closed new business. Perhaps you are involved with weekly meetings tracking open job requisitions, candidate pipeline, interviewing activity, and offer letter status. The spreadsheets may even look great, fancy colors and full of data. But the big question making you uncomfortable still goes unanswered. Can you really count on your Recruiter? Before your Sales team celebrates its next big win, take a few minutes and ask yourself if you see any of these signs that your Recruiter just can’t get the job done:

1. You get excuses instead of signed offers – One day this week, sit down with your Recruiting team and review every single candidate listed on your Recruiting Activity report with your team. I mean every name, whether the candidate is listed as a recent Submittal, a Phone interview, Personal Interview, or set to receive an offer. Ask your Recruiter, “What her status?” Does your Recruiter know precisely where each candidate stands? Has someone communicated with the candidate in the last 24 hours? If not, another company with another Recruiter is. That’s not good for your business. For candidates who are set to receive Offer Letters, or already have been extended verbal or written offers, ask your Recruiter this simple question, “Will this candidate accept our offer?” The answers to your specific questions about candidates – remember, these are your Recruiter’s candidates, they should have answers – could spell trouble for your business. Don’t accept responses like, “He’s gone dark on me.” Or, “You know I haven’t actually spoken to her in a few weeks.” Run from Recruiters with excuses, stick with the ones who get signed offers for you.
2. You realize you just don’t like your Recruiter - Find yourself avoiding your Recruiter in the hallway? Do you delay responding to emails requests from your Recruiter? How often do you take your Recruiter to lunch or coffee just to catch up on their family or life outside work (Tom Peters, renowned speaker and writer, highly recommends the power of lunching with team members in different functions of your organization.) Look, you don’t have to like your Recruiter. It’s not a requirement to have a successful recruiting engine at your company. However, if you don’t really like your Recruiter remember he’s the face of your organization to hundreds of potential new hires. They probably don’t like him either, and thus, it’s time for a change.
3. You hear more talk about Job Postings than Job Offers – Some Recruiters hunt and gather, others stay up on the porch waiting for the perfect buck to walk across the backyard. Let me assure you, after 25 years in the staffing industry, you want the Killer. That means you want Recruiters who pick up the phone, engage other humans, evaluate their skill set (accurately!), and sell them on your company. These hunting and gathering skills haven’t changed much with the advent of the internet and social media. Yes, Job Posting can be fruitful (Our firm increased revenue 12% directly attributable to increasing our LinkedIn Job Postings this year.). Posting websites make tracking analytics easy, too. Super candidates are out there in the market who may not want to talk to your Recruiter on the phone before reading a job description. It’s true, Job Postings can work to land a few good men and women. But don’t believe the ads that have you believe a good job posting opens the flood gates of dozens of perfect resumes right into your Inbox. Your Recruiters should post jobs, but they should be spending most of their time searching and identifying people to join your team proactively. Send the Recruiters on your team who just want to post jobs over the Human Resources team. You need Killers in this market.
4. Your Recruiter can’t sell your Vision – take your Recruiters to lunch and ask them, casually, “What sets our company apart from our competition?” If you get a blank stare, you got a big problem. Either you don’t do a good job explaining your Vision, or you have the wrong Recruiter. To get your business to the next level, you need Recruiters who believe in your Vision and can deliver it in 20 seconds to the next hot candidate.
5. Your Recruiter ain’t on the phone – Technology hasn’t changed this old-fashioned secret sauce. Recruiting is the ultimate people business. Finding talent is tough, the best candidates are in demand across most industries, and that means someone better be selling your culture, your benefits, your Vision. Email, text, LinkedIn are wonderful ways to communicate with prospects. But it remains true today in 2019, if your Recruiters ain’t on the phone, they’re not building a pipeline for your business. Smart people at some time want to talk to smart people about the employment process. Just considering a job change is an emotional commitment for humans – that means they want to hear a trusted, smart voice on the phone encouraging them and answering their very important questions about your jobs.
6. Deep down, you don’t believe in your Recruiter - Most baseball managers all utilize analytics to decide when to pull a pitcher from the game. That’s part of the game today. But great managers, great coaches, they know what their players are made of. The best managers have gut feelings before games and during the ebb and flow of a game, and these feelings are based on the belief deep down inside that their player will fight and compete in critical situations. Ask yourself, are you keeping your pitcher in too long? Do you believe in your Recruiter to deliver the right candidate at important times? If not, it’s time to move on.
7. Your Recruiter’s email communication is poor – Here’s the thing. Whatever correspondence you receive from your Recruiters, it’s the same correspondence your Job Candidates are receiving. The future of your company – New Hires – make the same observations that you do when they communicate with your Recruiters. Do your Recruiters write well? Do they ask poignant, specific questions? Do they inundate you with wasteful emails that could more efficiently be sent as one email? How often have you read an email from your Recruiter and asked yourself, “Gosh I just don’t think she gets it?”

These are just a few signs of trouble with your Recruiting team. The good news is there are many great solutions for you to resolve your staffing challenges. There are better Recruiters who fit your needs. Hey, the problem may start with you and your company. Recruiters need support from the Executive team, perhaps they aren’t receiving that support. And there are options to outsource your recruiting to a . And sleep better at night.