I visit hiring managers and organisations on a regular basis within my market specialisation. I believe it’s a huge benefit to build long term relationships and learn from the experts. Even if they’re not recruiting at the time of my visit, I want to develop my knowledge and building working relationships. I really appreciate that people would take time out of their days to meet me and educate me. Not only it will help me increase my knowledge, but I love connecting with different people and organisations.

I met a hiring manager a few weeks ago and we explored an interesting avenue of conversation. The meeting started well, I was asking plenty of questions and learning so much, until the questions turned around to me. “Your job is really easy isn’t it? All you do is match resumes, right?” What a perfect world it would be to put a job ad up and wait for that dream person with 15 years’ experience, only seeking the lowest of salaries. In fact, my job would be non-existent if that did happen!

After explaining my job and its associated processes to the hiring manager, this got me thinking, do people really know what recruiters do? Firstly, we are consultants, not “CV matchers”. We consult with job seekers and hiring managers, to help secure the best outcome for both parties. Working in such a talent short market, due to the increasing demand for this talent from hiring managers, means we have established many other avenues to attract talent. Social media has taken off and establishing how to engage with your audience has been a key factor of recruitment. We interview all our jobseekers, asking the correct probing questions and identifying the job seekers’ motivations and needs. This is highly valuable knowledge for a hiring manager.

Not only do we consult job seekers, but making sure that we understand the hiring manager’s needs are also very important. Understanding the business’ drivers and selling points means we can source the right person for that organisation. The competitive market means hiring managers need to move fast to secure strongly skilled job seekers and having a mutually beneficial arrangement within the recruitment process has proven to be a key factor. Referencing is important and should there be a salary negotiation we need to make sure we can manage both the job seeker and hiring manager’s expectations.

Although I love my job, it is not as easy as “matching resumes to jobs”. Every day you learn something new. If you would like to know more, I would welcome the discussion with anyone to talk more about what we do and how we do it.