Its the Talk, Not the Posture, That Counts

It was another boring recruiting presentation. The speaker droned on about “getting the best talent” and “the candidate experience.” I started to doze. I had arrived late to the presentation, and only caught the second of two speakers. That was disappointing, because I knew the first speaker to be a smart business person who only recently had stepped into the world of corporate recruiting.

At the end of the session both speakers stood at the podium and took questions. The first question was typical: “How come you don’t do assessments on your temporary clerks when do them on your regular clerks?”

The first speaker (the one I had missed) replied casually, “Because we have done the analysis and given the turnover of those employees we can't rationalize the cost given our profit margins.”

The room went stony silent. Not a peep. The speaker suddenly realized that they had made the fatal flaw of talking profit and loss to a crowd of “people people.” So they said quickly, “You know, it just is a big hassle and the candidates don’t really like it.” Relieved, most of the room nodded their head in approval and understanding.

When you read articles like the recent Fast company article about why everyone hates HR, spend time in sessions like the one I described above (which is a true story, by the way), have run your own business and also worked in a line function inside a larger company, you start to get a complete picture about why HR isn’t viewed as “strategic.” I know, I know – a lot of people are just getting sick of the concept. I thought Heather’s take on the idea was especially honest, since she said “I don’t want to be strategic, I just want to do my job” (which is ironic, since Heather is one of the few people that would be pointed to as “strategic” by virtue of the press she brings to Microsoft recruiting… but I digress).

But “being strategic” isn’t anything magic. It means you have a special sauce, that this special sauce is valued by the company, and that it would be more expensive if not downright impossible to get the same sauce elsewhere. By that measure most corporate recruiting departments (especially of high tech and creative companies) are “strategic” even if they don’t understand or appreciate the term or the position.

The real issue is not whether the corporate recruiting function is strategic. That is a smoke screen thrown up by people who can't really describe why they are so uncomfortable talking business with "people people." No, the real issue is that recruiters cannot speak the lingua franca of business – money. Corporate recruiting (again, my perspective is more geared towards high tech and creative companies, where talent shortages clearly impact the top and bottom line) is really the only business function that is strategic, but that still talks like a staff function.

Think about it. The finance department is seen as strategic (even though it is usually lousy at its job, but that is another gripe for another time). The CFO is at the center of most big corporate decisions, and the people who run finance usually sit at the right hand of operations and marketing. But you can take almost any finance department and outsource its various functions and still run your business just fine. Its not like there is something magic about a chart of accounts in one company versus another; no mystery in a GL for company A versus company B. Double entry accounting is double entry accounting no matter where you go. GAAP is GAAP. The fact that finance is so regulated and so disciplined really reduces much of its work to commodity transactions. You might argue that treasury provides real value if done right, but treasury is a small function compared to AP, AR, GL and cost accounting.

Compare that to the more advanced corporate recruiting department. They have highly specialized communication skills specific to the organization's needs, can negotiate objections that are specific to the company they work for, have to serve a client base that, due to the ambiguous nature of the client's needs and desires, can take years to understand and serve. In short, corporate recruiting is strategic because it provides unique value that is not easily or more cheaply replaceable outside the organization while getting the same quality of result.

Yet finance is universally recognized as strategic and recruiting is being outsourced regularly. Why?

Again, because recruiting can’t (or won’t) speak money. Recruiting describes its tactics, strategies and transactions in people and headcount terms, not in Cost Benefit, Net Present Value, Economic Value Add, or any of the other metrics that are used by "money" people (like the commodity finance department) to describe the outcomes of their processes and activities.

Once recruiting learns that it is not “strategic posturing” but instead “money talk” that is keeping them away from the Grail-like “table” then recruiting can start to change the way it communicates its value. Once people take their mind off "strategic" and put their mouth behind "money" we will start to see a change in the way that the recruiting department is valued.

Comments

[Heather]

We have to do math now? Oh no! ; )