According to a blind survey, almost all (96 percent) of tech employees do not feel recruiters are the best at evaluating potential candidates. The majority of respondents (66%) said teammates would be more effective in recruiting candidates.
What was their reasoning? Is there a misalignment between conventional and tech recruiters? Because many recruiters do not have a technical background, the employees polled thought recruiters were less equipped to judge a candidate’s technical competence. This is perhaps unsurprising to you as a recruiter. The notion that AI is a more feasible tool for recruiting than traditional recruiters is also predictable. Many large corporations, like Amazon, hopped on the AI bandwagon until their AI recruiting tools revealed a prejudice towards women.
Is their statement true?
Are workers or artificial intelligence (AI) better at evaluating potential applicants than technical recruiters? No, it does not. Though AI software can assist you in sorting through resumes and applications, it is not the be-all and end-all. Personnel identified in the blind report above, like many other tech employees, make a mistaken assumption.
Tech employees believe that having the proper abilities is required of a candidate to qualify as an ideal prospect.
The data demonstrates that this assumption is incorrect.
Technical Abilities Are Not Always Required for Core Competencies
The great majority of these basic abilities do not revolve around specifics such as technical capability. They are, instead, indications of character, personality, and competence. While many workers feel they are well-equipped to assess these abilities in potential recruits, the data above demonstrates otherwise.
You are uniquely qualified to tackle this challenge as a technical recruiter. Managers and executives fixed the tone for expectations when it comes to recruiting choices. They provide recruiters the values, culture, and job criteria they need to guarantee a candidate-company match.
What is the relevance of this?
Technical recruiters have the necessary expertise and tools to analyze potential prospects correctly. Recruiters are aware of:
- What they are looking for and how to find them are known ahead of time.
- How to assess applicants in such a way that their on-the-job performance is properly predicted
- How to connect their evaluation procedures with the processes of their client (or organization).
- The evaluation procedure is a two-way street. They are evaluating applicants, and candidates are evaluating them.
- How to overcome hidden or unconscious biases
- How to move applicants quickly through the recruiting process while without being sloppy or negligent
- The recruitment process requires some wooing and nurturing in order to be effective.
- To be effective, recruiting takes time.
- Which indicators and KPIs will be used to assess the recruiting pipeline’s health?
- Recruiters are professionals that collaborate with hiring managers to discover A-player prospects for a certain role or position.
What Is a Technical Recruiter’s Role?
For obvious reasons, technical recruiters differ from ordinary recruiters. To be effective, a general recruiter must know just enough about a wide range of sectors. On the other hand, technical recruiters are subspecialists; they are experts in a certain area or a subset of the technology business (e.g., IT, SaaS, eCommerce, agency, etc.). Internal recruiters work full-time for the recruiting firm as in-house employees. These positions are common in well-funded or mature companies. Their allegiances are completely aligned with their organization, but they generally lack the access, reach, and influence that external recruiters, executive search companies, or recruiting firms do.
External recruiters and recruitment firms are contractors; they usually have fewer duties than their internal counterparts, but they deal with a far larger number of organizations, giving them unparalleled access, reach, and influence. External recruiters with broad networks and highly responsive connections can fill jobs rapidly, especially if they are specialists.
A steady level of give-and-take is required in the hiring manager-recruiter interaction.
Why should we give and take?
The Holloway Guide to Technical Recruiting states that “Throughout one year, a recruiter may view more prospects and hires than a hiring manager will in their whole career. The bond between the two parties has the potential to make or destroy the entire recruitment process.”
What does this have to do with recruiters?
Hiring Managers and Recruiters Have Different Responsibilities
Hiring managers and recruiters divide their duties differently. The distribution of duty differs in every organization, and these tasks may alter as the firm expands. Among these obligations are:
- Identifying and creating networks for recruiting
- Developing and putting into action recruitment tactics
- Attending recruiting events and job fairs on behalf of the firm
- Developing a job description
- Recruiting, sourcing, and evaluating prospective employees
- Organizing informative discussions
- Beginning the interviewing process and evaluating possible prospects
- Job offers and rejections are forwarded.
- Compensation packages are negotiated.
The nature of these positions and duties will differ from one firm to another. You may be requested to modify your technique for a certain role or take on more responsibility than previously performed.
Be ready to adjust
Technical recruiters are skilled at recruiting engineering and IT technical positions. These positions demand full-time, T-shaped individuals with extensive knowledge in a specialized technological field. This implies that technical recruiters must be well-versed in order to interact with, analyze, and potential screen prospects successfully. Recruiters want clear feedback from hiring managers and teams as well.
To paraphrase The Holloway Guide:
“Recruiters and hiring managers have a similar connection to a vendor-client relationship. Teams have hiring requirements and submit requests, and recruiters fulfill the orders and provide the applicants. This works some of the time, but true success requires collaboration between recruiters and hiring managers. The objective is for both sides to be aligned around a shared purpose, to agree on priorities and expectations, and to feel at ease working together and providing feedback to one another. This enables a recruiter to grasp the demands of a hiring manager genuinely, and a hiring manager to appreciate the complexity and commitment necessary to hire effectively.”
To survive, hiring managers, teams, and recruiters must work together as partners.
