This is a question you’ve probably asked yourself, or maybe asked a recruiter who called to try to sell you on his service. And it’s an important question. Of course, if all your needs are being filled by your internal recruiting team, and you’re entirely happy with the people you’re hiring that way, then by all means, you don’t need me.
But let’s say you have an open position that has been sitting there for quite a while, unfilled. Or let’s say that you have made hires, but they haven’t worked out. Maybe they didn’t have the skillset they said they had, or possibly they lacked social skills and didn’t work well with others. Maybe they were unreliable and stopped showing up, or perhaps you were underpaying them and they found a more attractive position – the list goes on.
The hunter vs. the farmer
For any number of reasons, we often find that our internal recruitment teams have failed to close our reqs. But why? Or rather, why would an internal recruiter fail to fill a role, and an external recruiter succeed? That is the question. No one doubts that an external recruiter can fill jobs; however, you may believe that your internal team would do it just as well, and you are going to effectively pay double for the same results if you hire a firm like mine.
However, I would argue that an internal recruitment team and a consulting recruiter do different things. The jobs attract different kinds of people. At its core, the consulting recruiter is a hunter, while the internal recruiter is a farmer.
We’re different
There are exceptions to this. Personally, I have known internal recruiters who were people of great talent and energy, who went out and proactively found candidates, rather than posting ads and waiting for them to come. But these recruiters were very much the exception rather than the rule. Most internal recruiters are skilled at screening candidates out based on lack of experience or culture fit, but when no candidates are presenting themselves to be screened, they are often at a loss.
Not only that, but internal recruiters aren’t equipped to handle what external recruiters do, if we assume for a moment that they want to. Most companies aren’t hiring 100% of the time. Even large companies with thousands of employees go on hiring freezes when the budget is tight for any number of reasons. It often doesn’t make fiscal sense to even give internal recruiters the tools they would need to proactively seek out candidates, when those tools must be paid for even during long stretches of time when they are not being used.
An external recruiter is different. If they aren’t working for you, they’re working for someone else. Their recruiting tools are always being used, and the expense to have the best recruiting tools is easily justified. Not only that, but a different kind of person is attracted to the outside recruiter job.
It’s undeniable that outside recruiting is a sink-or-swim environment. If you’re good, work hard, and never take your foot off the gas -you can make a lot of money that way. But the washout rate is high, the base salary is low, and the pressure is always on. It’s easy not to make it.
Internal recruiters, on the other hand, face lower expectations, lower (but more stable) income potential, and long stretches of downtime.
The upshot of this is that the people who become external recruiters are, as a rule, more aggressive and more motivated than the people who become internal recruiters. They are also more likely to have the tools you need.
Also, there is a synergy between one search and another, particularly when the recruiter does similar searches over and over again. A recruiter who places engineers day in and day out will know a lot of engineers. The recruiter will always source more candidates than any given job needs, and those that are not placed in one role may be an excellent fit for another. The fact that we work on the same position over and over helps, and the variation in the specifics is an added benefit. A candidate initially contacted for an engineering position in Detroit who doesn’t like the cold may be the perfect fit for an engineering position in Chattanooga. And so on.
Now, some of these problems apply differently to a large organization. For instance, if you have a combined recruiting team for a large national hospital system, it’s likely they’re always recruiting nurses, and they have hospitals of different sizes, located in different climates, etc. So they can build a reusable network to some degree. But there are other issues at play.
An external recruiter can offer a certain level of neutrality. We are an honest broker, or at least we are perceived as such. A candidate may not see value in maintaining a long-term relationship with a recruiter who only represents one company, but a wise candidate will see value in maintaining a relationship with a recruiter who can bring a wide range of opportunities to bear.
We aren’t anti internal recruiters
So, now that we’ve talked about how external recruiters fill a niche that internal recruiters can’t, let’s talk about how they can work together.
First of all, the internal recruiter shouldn’t see the external recruiter as a threat or a replacement. We can’t replace them because, as we’ve just established, we have different responsibilities. Secondly, the internal recruiter should leverage their unique advantages. Just as the external recruiter has strengths the internal one doesn’t have, it cuts the other way too.
- The internal recruiter needs to use their intimate knowledge of the company to filter out people who fit on paper, but won’t actually match the culture.
- The internal recruiter has to represent the company culture in a positive way. Think show, not tell. Of course, an external recruiter should also treat candidates well; however, good treatment will mean a lot more, in terms of the candidate’s evaluation of the company, when it comes from the source.
- The internal recruiter should represent the external recruiter to the company leadership. Let me explain. While I’ve talked about what an external recruiter can do in terms of enhancing the recruitment process, we can only do that with the client’s cooperation. An internal recruiter should understand better than anyone the value of that, and should leverage the internal trust they have with leadership to make sure that the external recruiter’s suggestions for how to make things work better are heeded.
In conclusion
In short, while internal recruiters can be an important part of your strategy, especially when you have a desirable job where you will get applicants and you want to whittle them down to the right people, external recruiters fill a different niche and offer something most internal recruiters simply can’t. And if you do it right, you can get them to work together and get you the best of both worlds.
Sam Starrett is a Senior Recruiter for The Headhunters. Learn more here.