Relationship Building & Why Recruiting Should Be the Responsibility of Everybody
How do we build a more compelling and robust recruiting process that all employees want to take ownership of?
Back in late 2016, I was a couple of months away from finishing up a recruiting contract while looking for my next job. During one interview at a tech company, I spoke with the VP of People Operations and he told me about a book he thought I should read. Later that evening, I checked the book out from the local library. By the time I was through the first chapter, I was hooked.
The book is called Work Rules!, written by Google’s former SVP of People Operations, Laszlo Bock. It’s a book about how Google transformed into the cultural phenomenon it is today, and it largely focuses on HR topics — everything from recruiting, to talent reviews, to creating a culture that is inclusive of as many people as possible.
Some of what stood out to me the most was the mantra of treating people right. Doing right by people, even if it involves harder decisions. Best recruiting practices, including, most importantly, how recruiting should be the responsibility of everybody within a company.
Here's some insight for those not on the inside: HR/People Ops and Recruiting is an extremely challenging profession. It’s one of the few that deals directly with people and not with products. That responsibility is a burden for some, but for me, it became a huge motivator. My career was just getting started when I first read Work Rules! Now I’ve been in the industry for more than seven years and watched many of my colleagues quit to move on to less challenging work. They either realized they don’t want the responsibility of affecting a fellow human’s personal and professional aspirations, or the transactional nature of the industry has burnt them out.
Here’s how recruiting looks to most people:
Position opens and gets posted to job boards
Talent Acquisition (TA) team reviews resumes not rejected by Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and sets up the initial screen
1-3 additional interviews involving hiring managers and executives follows
Offer is made
Candidate begins work
In between that process is where the garbage begins to build up:
TA doesn’t follow up with the candidate after the initial screen
Candidates are asked to give 4-5 hours of their time to interview only to be sent a generic rejection letter with no feedback or reasoning included
TA makes promises on timelines that they know they cannot uphold
Communication that began with a resume submission ends with a rejection letter and no follow-up is ever initiated
Even from my TA seat, this process seems highly transactional — and it’s completely unacceptable. Recruiting, by nature, should be relationship-focused. But for a variety of reasons that have to do with time, money, technology, etc. it is anything but that. I know because I ask people and this is the feedback they’ve given me.
Luckily, there are many people like Bock who care about changing the industry.
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Why does talent often end up being mediocre? Why does turnover happen at a rapid pace? Why is a toxic cultural environment impossible to change?
All of these points are affected by how we recruit. They bleed even more because most organizations rely only on just the TA person or team to do the work. And for good reason: it is our primary responsibility. But I’m here to tell you that the real influence in recruiting comes when the entire company takes ownership of the process. That’s right. Everybody from the executive team down to the entry-level employees.
Most people reading this will not agree with that assessment. Again, I know this because I ask people and they hit me with a resounding “No” when it comes to taking ownership of recruiting. I’m too busy. That’s why we have a recruiter. Can’t a computer just do it for us?
So with that and the other challenges, how do we build a more compelling and robust recruiting process that all employees want to take ownership of?
It begins and ends with relationship building.
To help me connect the dots of my thesis, I’m going to discuss several topics but use examples from the Penn State Football program. College athletic recruiting, especially football, is highly complex — and while it’s not a perfect process, there’s a lot we can glean from it and apply to the corporate world.
Let’s begin with how Penn State recruits. This is a process that is years (not days, weeks, or months) in the making and involves many people. Penn State relies heavily on its entire coaching staff to evaluate kids, sometimes as young as thirteen years old, but mostly at the high school level. So they start recruiting early (sometimes with a five-year waiting period) and they have a specific target market. These are two items (recruiting early and defining a target market) right off the bat that companies can immediately institute if they’re not already doing so.
Why does Penn State begin scouting kids so early? It’s for two reasons: 1). to begin to project their physical and skill potential and 2). so they can begin relationship building. Penn State relies on its own evaluations of physical, skill, and character projections and takes input from recruiting services like 247 Sports. This type of partnership can happen at the corporate level with a national or local external recruiting firm. These firms can not only help with recruiting, but the good ones can provide tremendous industry knowledge and perspective, so it’s worth exploring the potential options in addition to your internal talent evaluation process.
All coaches at Penn State, from head coach James Franklin, down to his lowest-level assistants, are constantly building relationships with the players, their parents, friends, schools… anyone that can help them better determine a potential fit to their program. They get involved in their communities. They make an effort to get to know people. In corporate recruiting, how often do we have a conversation with a candidate and never talk to them again? It’s because our processes are too transactional: Post job, talk to the candidate who applies, if not a fit then reject. Our processes in corporate recruiting are focused on the one-time transaction for the posted role rather than community or relationship building.
Sometimes recruiting isn’t enough of a priority, but not at Penn State. Coach Franklin takes the lead in recruiting by being very vocal and visible in the communities they recruit from and on social media. His coaches then follow that with their specialties and enthusiasm. This is where we need owners and executive team leaders from the corporate world to step up. We can’t keep saying we are too busy to get involved with recruiting or that it’s not in our job title or description. It’s a clear misalignment of priorities to not take ownership in recruiting. When higher-ups take it seriously, that tells lower-level employees that it’s important too.
Even if we were to have the best recruiting process, turnover still happens. How do we plan for and address it? This is where pipelining comes in. Graduating is like employee turnover. It’s going to happen. Sometimes it happens at Penn State with players who are no longer a fit but sometimes it happens with program legends leaving for the next level. Either way, turnover occurs and so recruiting never ends.
When pipelining, there are obvious positions that carry more weight (quarterback, for example) just like higher-up positions in the corporate world. With that said, each position on the field is important and is constantly evaluated in terms of current contributions and future projections. We can do the same evaluations at the corporate level by creating an organizational chart and using that to assess each position in the company. The cool thing in the corporate world is that we can even use this process to project growth positions, whereas there is a set limit to how many scholarships Penn State can give out, not to mention the set number of players who can play on the field one time.
Headcount plays a large role in companies too. But don’t be deterred by the numbers game. It can be to our advantage. If a player gets injured or isn’t performing up to standard, Penn State usually has a capable replacement waiting to take over. They don’t sacrifice quality just to hit a set number of scholarships. They know that at any moment they might need a person to step up and play meaningful snaps. That’s how a competitive culture is created. The same can be done in the corporate world. We should never sacrifice quality. The higher quality employees one company has, the more competitive it will be. The more competitive the culture is, the more they will achieve their company goals.
Continuous recruiting and pipelining have many benefits, but it’s certainly not foolproof. A recent evaluation of Penn State found that they have an intermediate or critical level of need at positions like quarterback, linebacker, and safety. So while it’s not ideal that their talent evaluations haven’t panned out exactly as planned in those positions, there’s at least the recognition that those areas need to be addressed. It appalls me how often I’ve asked people in corporate companies if they know current recruiting needs only to be met by blank stares. If we aren’t constantly evaluating our people (aka the company), we are doing an extreme disservice to everybody. And if our people don’t know our needs, then how can they be expected to help?
As an aside: Don’t get fooled by commercials from companies who want you to believe that recruiting (from a candidate experience and a company perspective) is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons on your smartphone. I believe there’s a direct correlation between the money that companies spend on corrupting our minds with that junk and the mediocrity that largely exists within companies in corporate America.
What’s interesting to note is that none of the coaches at Penn State have the term “recruiter” in their job title. Like I often talk about in leadership: titles of manager or executive aren’t the only people who can lead. It’s the same with recruiting. Just because there isn’t a title associated with their jobs doesn’t mean they can’t take on that responsibility. At Penn State, Coach Franklin would never be able to recruit all on his own, plus, by having the whole staff involved, they can better recruit when they can diversify their efforts and play to each other’s strengths.
Guess who also does a lot of recruiting on behalf of Penn State? The players — and there’s an awesome duality to this. Current and former players are often seen advocating on behalf of the team, plus they get incoming recruits to help out! This may be the most powerful aspect of the recruiting machine at Penn State. When current players recruit, it means they are happy where they are. When former players recruit, it means they had a great experience that they want others to enjoy. And when incoming recruits also recruit, it shows in the finest form ownership of what they are about to embark on.
If that doesn’t display a healthy culture then I don’t know what else does? Players are the people in the trenches on every snap. The relationships they build came because they took ownership of their ability to influence the present and the future.
We’ve talked a lot about recruiting for players at Penn State, but what about when a coaching change is needed? One example I like to talk about came recently when Penn State lost an excellent coach and recruiter to the NFL. Coaches often leave for job advancements at the amateur or professional level of football. What’s great about Coach Franklin is that he is always recruiting a pipelining for inevitable coaching changes. Whether it’s due to performance or promotion, Coach Franklin knows he needs to be ready with replacements. He keeps a running list of coaches whom he’s interacted with (or not) who share his values, who have a passion for relationship-building, and whose peers say positive things about them.
In the corporate world, folks leave companies all of the time for job advancement opportunities or due to performance. We know this is going to happen yet we often don’t have anyone in mind that we could reach out to and who could be a potential fit if a key person were to leave today. We usually have to start fresh and that’s because of a transactional approach to recruiting.
By taking Coach Franklin’s approach, we can see how he can make a quick hire and have confidence in that coach because they’ve already built up trust. I’d be willing to bet that Coach Franklin has never hired an individual who didn’t have some type of tie to him, his staff, or the team he coached. That’s how important relationships are to him and the success he has had.
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I wrote in my Amazon bestseller Culture of Excellence that upholding a compelling culture is a laborious process. The same can be said about recruiting.
I get it — it’s much easier to be transactional. I fall into the trap at times. Covid makes the challenge even more difficult. But it’s not impossible to focus more on relationship building and getting everyone in the company to have ownership in the recruiting process.
Change is possible. It will take time and adjustments. But we don’t get to be a globally recognized brand like Penn State Football without putting in serious effort with recruiting. That’s what we need to remember when we think it’s impossible.
People are the lifeline of our companies. Recruit in a more human way, get everyone to take ownership, and watch your company excel like never before!
Starters Checklist
Recruit early
Define a target market
Consider partnering with external recruiting firms, even if it’s just for enhanced industry and candidate knowledge
Make recruiting a priority
Address and plan for turnover
Turn everybody into a recruiter
Focus on relationships; don’t be transactional