Recruiting is an integral profession. Strategic recruiters scour the talent landscape, tracking down and engaging professionals at all levels—from C-level executives to part-time, hourly workers—and across all industries. They have the ability to change lives and the ability to alter the course of a company’s overall success by recruiting the very best talent available.
But how do today’s recruiters value themselves, their work and the state of recruiting? How do CEOs, hiring managers and other organizational leaders value their recruitment teams? Are recruiters positioned to succeed or are organizational detractors limiting their potential?
For answers, we turn to this week’s Talent Acquisition Fast Facts:
ERE recently conducted their 2014 State of Recruiting study — surveying 1,300 recruiters, recruiting leaders, hiring managers, HR leaders and C-level executives to gain direct insight into today’s recruitment industry.
According to the ERE report, respondents were asked to grade the performance of their organization’s recruitment department/function. There appeared to be a disconnect:
- Recruiters/Recruitment Leaders: B
- Other Team Members: B
- Human Resources: B-
- C-Level Executives: B-
- Hiring Managers: C+
The impact of talent is well known. Why, then, are so many settling for average to below average recruiting? There also appears to be a disconnect between hiring managers, the C-suite and those actually recruiting. Does the problem perhaps begin with communication? Are recruiters given the necessary resources to succeed?
The 1,300 surveyed recruiters, recruiting leaders, hiring managers, HR leaders and C-level executives listed what they believe should be the top hiring metrics when it comes to evaluating recruitment performance:
1.) Quality of Hire
2.) Hiring Manager Satisfaction
3.) Candidate Satisfaction
4.) Applicant Quality
However, when recruiters and recruiting leaders were asked what hiring metric is actually valued most by hiring managers and C-level executives—time-to-fill bypassed Nos. 3 and 4 above.
The recruiters surveyed for ERE’s study were asked the top-five issues that most discourage them while on the job; hiring managers factored into four of them.
First the performance grade disconnect between hiring managers (C+) and recruiters (B), and now hiring managers are being listed as one of the primary sources of their dissatisfaction. What gives?
Marketing firm, echogravity, recently conducted a survey to explore the mindset of today’s recruiters. According to the study, 60.6% of recruiters plan to remain in the profession for the remainder of their careers; 9.1% want to leave the profession immediately.
Additional noteworthy trends from echogravity’s report include:
- 73% of recruiters work more than 40 hours per week; 36% work 50+ hours.
- 78.8% of recruiters say their teams have had various amounts of turnover in the past 12 months.
- 53.1% of recruiters believe management places a greater emphasis on sales and operations than on recruiting.
- 24.2% of recruiters feel their compensation is below market level; 57.6% says it’s equal to market level.
Salary Explorer conducts comprehensive surveys to determine job rating scores. According to the findings, recruiters at smaller companies are much more satisfied than those employed by larger organizations (1 being the worst, 5 the best):
- 5,001-10,000+ employees: 2.62
- 1,001-5,000 employees: 2.68
- 501-1,000 employees: 2.79
- 251-500 employees: 2.88
- 50-250 employees: 2.72
- 20 employees or less: 2.98
Also according to Salary Explorer’s findings, the overall rating for the Recruiter position is 2.74.
- The findings are promising, however, as the average rating of all jobs comes in at 2.67—with recruiting ranking 11th overall.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on the current state of recruiting, the hiring manager-recruiter relationship and all related issues!