A Good Recruiter Is Hard To Find
First published in Shortlist’s monthly newsletter…
Did you know that in the US there are now more job openings for recruiters than for software engineers? That’s right: according to LinkedIn, there are 290,000 openings for recruiters and only 190,000 for software engineers, and role openings for recruiters have grown 6.8x from June 2020 to June 2021. It’s never been harder to find a good recruiter!
What’s driving this? Likely multiple factors… First, we have the “Great Resignation of 2021”, as companies grapple with unprecedented attrition, putting strain on in-house talent teams to replace those departing. Second, many companies are growing faster than ever, fueled by an epic VC boom. And third, the recruitment game is changing: not only has tech and AI not solved hiring, the skill of recruiting is more important than ever as talent acquisition teams can no longer rely solely on the formula of job posts, applicant reviews, and interviews. Recruiters now need to get out there and headhunt: they need to source top talent creatively, sell top talent on the company, and evaluate fit in a dynamic marketplace.
We’ve felt the recruiter squeeze hiring for our own team. (Have you noticed the persistent push to send us amazing people at the bottom of this newsletter??) Being a great search consultant requires a special mix of a broad industry understanding, super smarts, great communication skills, and the ability to juggle many things at once, all the while delivering great experiences to both clients and candidates. Not only is it hard to find these folks, but when we do, we still have to sell the opportunity — after all, people with this stack of skills have options!
If we can’t find all the great recruiters we need… let’s make them! A couple of months ago we started “Search School”, stitching together content, practice and apprenticeship to teach people both the global best practices of executive search as well as the unique brand of Shortlist search. We’ve had 6 new joinees go through our “v1” program, many of whom were very experienced themselves and helped build and improve the curriculum as we went.
We’re now excited to upgrade in the coming months to a “v2” as we grow our team and also consider ways we can help other talent acquisition teams around the world improve their in-house recruiting effectiveness and drive more talent into amazing (and much needed) career tracks in recruiting and executive search. If you’d like to learn more… let me know!
Happy hiring,
Paul