After last week’s expose into the superficial side of recruitment, I wouldn’t dare back it up with another venture into vacuousphere. Probably put a blog or two between that to avoid any looming #cancelrice campaigns. You’ll have to go back to a simpler time (2017) in The Whiteboard archives to unearth JR’s white van man views on ‘looks’ in recruitment, perhaps a subject better left to a recently married bearded chauvinist in the Rice ranks. I’m talking about recruitment models. We’ve seen some changes to the norm over the last year, in an attempt to best move with the shifting sands of the recruitment landscape. There are tried and tested models and ones that are a little more bespoke with varying degrees that would make Mr. Anthony Hawks’ head spin but undoubtedly, you’ll fall into one of the following.
Like the Vitruvian man with the perfect circle surrounding him, these consultants seem to have multiple limbs. Sourcing candidates while simultaneously developing business. This is a model that a lot of the market has referred back to in recent times. It makes sense; if you’re the one taking the brief, you’re going to be in the best position to find the candidates. The buck also stops with you, if the candidate doesn’t cut mustard it’s your head on the chopping block, there’s no outsourcing of the blame and for us controlling recruiters, that’s about right. This means you also get all the rewards! None of those blurred splits of money and accolades. It’s a model that I’ve been most familiar through my recruitment career. Admittedly, I’ve never been profitable enough to slot in a nubile candidate manager beneath me so…
This model is more common within sectors that are booming; your ITs, your constructions. If a 360 recruiter is Superman this is a model similar to a Batman and Robin relationship. Instead of flipping between both sides of the coin; business development and candidate sourcing, one of the duo will be dedicated to either half. Half of 360 is 180 don’t ya know. This births a candidate manager or a client manager, for the sake of semantics we’ll continue on with these titles. The theory is that while the candidate manager is creating silo’s/pipelines of available candidates it frees up the client manager to develop business among other things. It takes the synergy of a Cole/Yorke, Sutton/Shearer, Dalglish/Rush to effectively make this work and often a candidate manager with thicker than average skin.
270/90.
It’s a model that’s typically not as popular as the other two but it’s recently been taken on by a global recruitment agency in Auckland to, what I’m hearing great effect. Only a few degrees out from the previous model but those degrees are skewed on to the candidate manager. Essentially giving them more exposure to the client side; taking a brief, scheduling interviews on top of the usual candidate generation/registration. The remaining quarter of the pie is being referred to as a client engagement manager. Their sole purpose is to partner with the existing client base, squeeze as much business out of them while mapping your market and developing business at a higher rate than previously expected. It’s comparative to a BDM role but a little more strategic with an emphasis on getting in front of hiring managers on a regular basis.
Hard to say what works best, I think in the boom times the 180 model wins out; it’s clear, concise and everyone knows what their roles are. However, it can breed disdain between the two consultants if the candidate manager isn’t fairly compensated or feels progression isn’t available. 360 is the old standard and what a lot of consultants in the market have found themselves defaulting to. When the first wave of Covid panic swept over the industry it was candidate managers that were judged surplus, deemed almost decadent. This is why the 270/90 model is an interesting one. With a high number of candidate managers left out to dry during lockdown, it’s agencies that are still curating positions whose sole purpose is to source candidates had a plethora of eager employees to pick from. Then again, there isn’t a lot of candidates out there. Perhaps slightly hyperbolic but; we’re in the midst of the worst candidate shortage there’s been in recent memory. With work slowly returning we’re a little way off the consistency of 2019. There’s still a good amount of shining of one’s shoes to go before consultants start suggesting a dedicated resourcer.
