Active sourcing is a relatively new concept and considering how critical senior leadership is for the future of a company, it is increasingly an important phenomena for senior management hires. We scouted our social media channels to discover what are the biggest hurdles recruiters face.
Recently in an online Twitter chat, @sourcingadda came up with a question, we would often like to ask ourselves. Mainly because, as a product company, the mainstay of our company is to ensure that our partners find senior talent successfully on our talent marketplace. We are big promoters of active sourcing in this space, considering the time it may take to get the right talent profile and cultural fit for an organization.
Understanding the hiring manager needs: The first response came from a Twitter user lamenting the gap between the sourcing manager – a headhunter or recruiter and the final hiring manager’s requirements. This is something we have heard previously as well.
German Consultant and Leadership guru, Soraya Kandan in a conversation with me, once reasoned that the difference between what the actual profile is and what the recruiter understands is often the biggest bottleneck and makes the big difference during a successful hiring in the end.
Inability to find candidate contact details: The next hurdle recruiters seem to face is the challenges in connecting with candidates. This is especially true when they are searching for candidates online, and obviously even more true for senior talent- people who are not ‘digital natives’ and may not have shared their contact details online especially due to privacy concerns.
As a platform it is our biggest challenge as well as a solution we try hard to perfect. Discrete communication channels are provided to our recruiters (when the candidates allow for it) and we hope that makes the interactions easier. We can totally understand how frustrating this issue can be!
Incomplete online profiles: I spoke quickly to our customer care department to confirm, and this indeed is generally our usual tip to candidates, to update their profiles with the data set including career goals, experiences, skill sets on an ongoing basis, even when not looking for a job.
It is no surprise that the online ‘presence’ or a ‘profile’ happens to be a door opener for most executive job opportunities. And I can’t understand why so many of us still lack at ensuring that we present our best foot forward online! In today’s day and age, it is an absolute crime.
And this is not limited to young digitally savvy professionals. Leaders like Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington and many more have opened up to the immense ‘self-branding’ opportunity the Internet provides. What a pointless hurdle to the recruiter!
Profiles with frills and personalities without them: As a company, we work together with headhunters and companies currently solving for the first three hurdles more directly. We believe well begun is half done. However, the issue that profiles paint pictures far brighter than the actual observations during an interview is quite profound.
We think part of it can be solved by ensuring the recruitment requirements are clear from the beginning and the understanding from both sides is clear. We also feel, if the candidate search is successfully implemented- which includes active sourcing to keep a laundry list of high profile talent in a database, the likelihood of having a Plan B is definitely greater!
Are there any big hurdles we missed out in this post that you know recruiters are facing? Let us know!
Sources: This chat conversation is originally from Twitter and curated using Storify.
