Just the other day, my colleague shared this LinkedIn post about recruiting jobs on Slack, my team responded with their best emojis (from the double exclamation to the shocked face to the wide eyes, my personal fave), and I wrote this blog post.
In nearly that same time frame (as the post revealed), companies across the U.S. seemingly posted somewhere between 4,000 and 14,000 new recruiter jobs.
👀
The question isn’t why. We all know that businesses can’t hire fast enough and current talent acquisition teams are overburdened and burnt out. And the question isn’t even whether the accurate number is closer to 4,600 or 16,000 – either way, it’s still more than we’ve seen pre-pandemic (in July 2021, there were more open recruiting jobs on LinkedIn than there were software engineers).
The question is: Why would a recruiter take one of these newly-posted jobs? Or, more importantly, why will recruiters stay at their job?
Answer: For the opportunity to do more of what they love and less of what they hate.
Why does recruiting work involve doing so much stuff we hate?
Thanks to Gmail’s Time Insights, I know that I will spend at least 20 hours in meetings this week. If the average meeting is 30 to 60 minutes, that means I scheduled anywhere from 20 to 40 meetings. I enjoy most of the meetings I attend, it’s part of what energizes me about my job (I said most, OK?!); but I hate actually scheduling stuff.
I frequently say out loud to myself: “It’s 2021 (wait, now 2022) … why is anyone still scheduling their own meetings?!”
Well, recruiters have it the worst. Recruiters, on average, spend 16-20 hours a week scheduling interviews. Nearly the same amount of time I spend talking and collaborating with colleagues, recruiters spend manually cross-referencing calendars, emailing back and forth with non-responsive candidates and hiring managers, and typing in meeting details before pressing “send” on an interview invite.
Many of these interviews are for other people. Some of the invitees don’t even show up. Few progress to the next stage of the process. It’s a grind.
I don’t have experience as a recruiter, but my colleagues and I talk to a lot of recruiting and talent acquisition professionals. And I do have experience as a hiring manager – and a person. People hate scheduling and rescheduling meetings. People hate having to play phone tag or email tag. People hate feeling like their time isn’t well spent … or that they simply don’t have enough time to do what they need to do.
For quick reference, take a look at my non-scientific Exhibit A on other things people don’t like to do:
Exhibit A:
Most recruiters live in the world of administrivia (column A) when they’re at their best living in the world of people (column B). Companies will attract top talent for those 4,600 to 14,000 new recruiting roles (and retain the recruiters they have) by giving them more time to spend with people.
So how do companies actually give recruiters time back when reqs and workload have increased more than 30%*?
The simplest answer is to eliminate what they don’t like to do from their job description, by using new tools and software solutions. When you eliminate excess, you create productivity. The next step is to state that in the job description, front and center. At Paradox, we imagine a world where companies will shout from the rooftops (and in their job postings) that they have a scheduling AI assistant that actually gets work done for recruiters.
As a marketer, would I rather take a new role at:
- Company A that uses leading account-based marketing software, automation, data enrichment, intent tools, etc. to support me, OR:
- Company B that has no budget or vision for automation or technology, meaning I’ll have to cobble together everything manually?
Company A’s approach to technology and marketing will make my job exponentially easier. And likely make me more successful. I might not even take an interview at Company B.
I’ll shout this from the rooftops: Give your recruiters “easy.” Give them ways to be more successful. Give them assistance.
Recruiting AI tech that does work for you (i.e., an assistant like Olivia) is the simplest way to do that. And there’s proof: Companies with centralized recruiting state that 72% of recruiters are more likely to stay at their current job with the use of conversational AI.
If you “hired” Olivia, for instance, Exhibit A would look like this (and is a pretty great start for an updated job description, in my opinion):
Improved Exhibit A:
Thirty percent or more of recruiters report being burned out because they spend more than half their work week – 16-20 hours scheduling and an additional 10 finding candidates in the ATS – doing things that detract from their value (the left) vs. fuel their value (the right). Technology like an assistant can reduce that burden by half – hell, in some cases, fully. That’s 20+ hours a week of productivity going into column B. That could mean fewer hires you have to fight for in the sea of 14,000 recruiting jobs. It also means happier recruiters.
And if you don’t have the tech right now to use to your competitive advantage, I’ll reiterate this: Simply hiring more recruiters (who will spend half their time doing busy work that burns them out) won’t solve your problem. As you add more brilliant talent to your team to do more work, why not also consider how you can make decisions that take more work off their plates, too?
Imagine if those 4,000+ job descriptions for recruiters actually delineated how technology, or an assistant, would help free up their time.
If right there, in plain text, a potential candidate knew they would never have to schedule another interview again if they took this recruiting job at this company.
If you gave your recruiters a world where they spent more time with people than they did with software.
👀
But in non-emoji speak: game changer.
*Source: Aptitude Research Report on Conversational AI, 2021
