BIRMINGHAM, AL - My buddy, Kris Dunn, over at FOT has a great post today called Scared? Don't Hire More Recruiters. Check it out and then come back ...
Did you read the post? What are you waiting for?? GO!!!
Kris talks about how the economy is recovering and then assesses whether or not the uptick is strong enough for companies to re-staff their recruiting departments. The way Kris sees it, corporations have four options, which you can see in his article.
But Kris misses an option: Why not hire a recruiter to handle your own company's searches in addition to somebody else's searches as a third party recruiter?
I'm always amazed that companies don't treat their cost centers like profit centers. When you think about it, any professional activity that may be a cost center to your company is actually a profit center to another company. Are accountants a cost center on your company's P&L? Well, an accountant working for a private CPA firm is certainly a profit center in that environment.
And so it is with corporate recruiters, many of whom are amazing – and some of whom have actually worked previously on the agency side. Is it inconceivable to think that any candidate who submits her resume to a company with a great employment brand – REI, for example – wouldn't like to hear from REI about similarly great "REI partner companies" who might have a need for the candidate's services in the event that REI can't use her at the moment? Some of my clients have larger house databases than I do -- maybe not for ecommerce, but certainly for retail. And they ALL subscribe to the same third-party databases like Linkedin, CareerBuilder, Dice, Monster, etc.
Last year my average invoice was $22,500. Is it so crazy to think that corporate recruiters couldn't get a similar piece of the action during their down times?
Somebody please help me understand why this type of thing isn't done. If it's about the liability and the guarantees, I can assure you that those issues are not great enough to offset the profit potential of such an initiative. If they were, I wouldn't be a recruiter.
Enlighten me. Please advise your comments below.