15 people on a dead man's chest: distribution of tasks in recruiting

“Fifteen people on a dead man's chest.
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink, and the devil will bring you to the end.
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! ”

Recently, I began to worry about the processes of organizing work in the recruiting department. This happened after 25 vacancies fell on me. When I tried to understand how to approach them, and tried to sort them by priority, by technological similarity, by customer, by possible scenario, I realized that such sorting is actually a tricky science, which in itself requires detailed studying.
Once I heard from a colleague the phrase “the process is not important to me, the result is important to me”. And although I am also a person of result, and it is extremely important for me to see the fruits of my work, I am increasingly aware that the competent organization of this process itself greatly affects the outcome of the work.

Below I will try to give a certain classification of how you can organize work on vacancies in the recruiting department, and along the way I will think a little about the roles in the selection of personnel. I draw all these conclusions based on my experience, therefore I do not exclude gaps in my perception, and I will be grateful for constructive criticism.


1. Separation by location.

Now I work in two markets: Minsk and Moscow. Immediately I thought that it would be more correct to divide recruiters by location, but in reality, such a division cannot always provide an equal load for all recruiters in the company. Yes, and I, for example, is motivated by the development of new "lands". And not only from the point of view of the scope for hunting, but also because it is possible to compare the market, tools, and even working methods. Such an analysis broadens the horizons and develops a specialist, so that the separation of locations is canceled.

2. The separation of technology.

More appropriate is the separation of technologies. For example, stuffing of the same direction in different offices. Such an approach would give certain advantages in the work of competent specialists: at a minimum, it would help determine the most favorable territory for the development of a particular expertise in the company. However, this approach has its drawbacks: firstly, if the direction is large, then the recruiter will have to work only for him, which can be boring and even disgusting, although it cannot be denied that the more experience the recruiter has with a certain technological stack, the more productive this Work. From the obvious pluses:

• less time is spent analyzing the vacancy and clarifying the requirements,
• more understanding of the vacancy itself and the essence of the work,
• less time is spent on compiling search queries by keywords, maybe there are ready-made query templates that you can use,
• there is an understanding of the market and a list of donor companies,
• there are job templates that require small changes (and creating vacancies from scratch is very time-consuming),
• There is a pool of candidates who can be “contacted” for contact.

3. Separation by customers.

With this approach, one should not lose sight of the fact that there can be different customers within the company for the same technologies, which increases the flow of communications of the recruiter, and hence its load. In addition to time costs when working with different customers, it is also necessary to take into account the difference in business domains. Anyone who has come across a kit for different businesses can understand that the same java takes on completely different shades when we talk about developing banking products or telecom applications. Moreover, in addition to the profound differences in requirements, the company’s selection for different business domains may differ in process, which again takes time for switching and communication, and at times can cause a little confusion, therefore, with this approach, it is necessary to lay a margin of time and patience to recruiter errors. =)

4. The combination of several directions.

But what if the company has a wide technological spectrum and 1-2 vacancies for each are open? In this case, the only way out is to divide the work of one recruiter (or a bunch of recruiter-assistant) into several technological areas. With this approach, it is imperative that management comply with several conditions:

• prioritization of vacancies and directions,
• regular status updates and feedback
• help in solving organizational issues.

The recruiter himself is required to:

• understanding of priorities, and action in accordance with them,
• competent planning of your time,
• maintaining reports and detailed history in all directions,
• maximum number of templates.

This approach, when one recruiter leads several directions, seems to me the most difficult, because in such a job you have to constantly analyze and take into account large flows of information, in addition, it’s hard not to slip into work on your “favorite”, simplest or most complex job and not "Run" others. This "desolation" is extremely promoted by passivity of the customer. I know for myself that more active work is underway on those vacancies for which you are teased and are asked at least once a day about the news. And when you wait for feedback after an interview or agree on a job offer for two weeks, this in itself demotivates and significantly slows down the work.

5. Work in parallel with other recruiters on several vacancies.

Sometimes, several recruiters are appointed for reinsurance to maintain the same complex vacancy. This can have a positive effect, however, only with the proper coordination of their work, otherwise it does not make sense at all, because very time consuming and careless in terms of resource sharing. When organizing such work, it is important:

• Provide a single input and output stream of information , i.e. one recruiter communicates with the customer when removing requirements, clarifying, presenting candidates, making decisions on them, or clarifying the requirements takes place at a general meeting, where all involved recruiters are present, but this can also be unreasonably time consuming.
• Clearly divide the roles , for example, appoint a lead who will oversee the process, the rest to determine the roles of scouts and recruiters, again in order to avoid all the recruiters doing the same job.
• Divide the recruitment process into separate tasks and assign them to different people : the most meaningful process for me is dividing the work of tools: one recruiter “combes” the database, the second - job placement sites, the third - forums, communities, colleagues' recommendations, and the fourth - social networks.
• To ensure full visibility of the work of colleagues for each other , in order to avoid duplication of information, and to save time and resources, this will allow recruiters to complement each other, while not competing for candidates.

6. Separation of work by tasks.

This option of organizing recruiting seems to me the most controversial and difficult to implement. Separation of the rescher / assistant => recruiter => team leader, etc. not according to seniority of the position and “epaulettes”, but according to duties, it is necessary to conduct it very carefully, since the edges of transitions from position to position are very blurry.
Now, as a recruiter, I really lack an assistant who could:

• maintain lists of candidates, maintaining up-to-date and standardized information in them (single spelling, company names, list of skills, form of comments);
• keep the base up to date;
• prepare reports at the request of management, i.e. "Comb" ixels, create pivot tables;
• Create interview invitations in the mail
• send letters of invitation for interviews to candidates and collect confirmations;
• create vacancy texts and post them on available resources.

At the same time, as a recruiter, I would not want to delegate:

• creating search queries;
• search and first contact with candidates,
• assessment of candidates and the "sale" of vacancies,
• telephone screening
• Interviewing
• providing feedback to the candidate.

All processes related to communication with candidates cannot be divided hierarchically, because this will only cause confusion and loss of information. One recruiter must lead one candidate from beginning to end, an assistant can only help him in manual work, otherwise we are already talking about a different interaction scenario (see paragraph 5).
On the other hand, it takes a lot of time and effort to guide myself, no matter how funny it may sound. Therefore, I am sure that a recruiting team needs a manager or lead to address the following issues:

• task distribution
• job prioritization,
• holding of rallies,
• collection and analysis of reports,
• making decisions on changing the strategy,
• assistance in identifying errors / bottlenecks and work to resolve them,
• Acting as a “lever of pressure” on the customer.

Thus, a certain hierarchy can still exist, however, it is important to divide the roles functionally and each specialist to designate a clear area of ​​responsibility and responsibilities.

In my analysis, I talked only about the part of the work related to recruiting, and did not affect the HR at all, although sometimes even in large companies these two functions have to be combined by one specialist. In such a situation, the need for a competent leader who sees all the processes and tasks and knows how to organize work on them only increases.
In addition, I did not touch upon the system of growth, development and remuneration of recruiters, but this is still a different topic, although it is related to the distribution of responsibilities directly.

I hope to receive feedback from you about what principle of organization of work you use, and which principle seems to you the most optimal? I would also like to receive healthy criticism if I missed something or did not take it into account.