The Dynamic Between Internal Corporate Recruiting and Search Firms
Competition, Partner, or Resource?
The Dynamic Between
Internal Corporate Recruiting
and Search Firms
The origin of this topic starts with the fact that my career started as an Associate at a retained executive recruiting firm. After two years in that ground floor position, I was recruited to a $500 million public company to build an internal recruiting function to reduce the fees the company paid outside recruiters. Overnight, outside recruiters became the enemy.
What I did not know about my first corporate experience was that hiring managers did not want to abandon the use of search firms and use my services - recruiting engagements were not dropped in my lap. I set up my meetings and traveled from office to office to introduce myself and get my first engagement. The Hiring Manager who gave me my chance did so because I would compete with a search firm to get the hire. I won and leveraged the win to ultimately build a function that consistently logged well over $2 million in cost avoidance every year. Each year my passion to root out search firms grew. And then I grew up.
By now I was at a professional services firm hiring experienced big billers into revenue-generating consulting positions. None of the practices I supported were in familiar industries. Still, good recruiters are good at assimilating all kinds of disparate information to craft a story to take to the candidate market. As my reputation for results grew, so did my workload and because I mastered knowledge of formerly unfamiliar businesses, I was always eager to tackle more.
One day my robust ego and I got a new engagement to find the right-hand person for one of our most esteemed business leaders. Quickly, I found that the methods and cadence that proved useful for hundreds of engagements no longer worked optimally; my style fell flat, and my knowledge did not stand up to the intricate questions of target candidates.
Puzzled, frustrated, and feeling insecure, I was called into my boss’s office who told me the business leader requested that we use a recruiting firm. My heart raced. I felt that I failed but I’ll not forget, and shall forever be grateful, for the words my boss shared; “Michael, your customers here know you are a good recruiter and deliver results but (my heart rate shot through the ceiling) you need to be comfortable in your skin, grow up and realize that your job is to solve recruiting problems for your customers. Sometimes this means that you get to be the hero by filling the job yourself and sometimes, and this is one of those times, you get to be a hero by having others do the work. In either case, the customer gets their problem solved. Think of outside recruiters as just another tool to solve problems for customers."
These words still count as some of the most formative over my 25+ years of recruiting experience. In future posts, I’ll write about the use cases for internal and external recruiting. Many CHROs and TA leads get in wrong. With a bit of fresh thinking, internal and external recruiters can comfortably co-exist and, even better, can evolve the relationship to a situation where 1-1 = 3.
Framing the dynamic this way – using the search firm as a tool – gives internal recruiting functions the flexibility to serve their customers with greater impact. In the articles ahead we’ll look at:
- A framework to assist in deciding the best course of action to fill a position.
- Resourcing internal recruiting teams.
- Comparing and contrasting different internal and external recruiting models.
- A framework for matching the right search firm with the right search.
- How to get the most from using a search firm.
So, there is much more to follow. In the meantime, on behalf of the Group928 team, I wish you and yours a safe, joyous, and happy Holiday Season.
