Everything you ever wanted to know about recruitment!
What are the types of recruitment?
Generally there are two main types of recruitment: recruitment by the employer directly, or recruitment via a third party – ie. a recruitment agency.
Companies may opt to manage their recruitment in-house for a variety of reasons. For example:
- They have the necessary resource to do so (either their HR team or one or more in-house recruitment or talent acquisition professionals)
- They are only ever recruiting for single roles at a time, making things relatively manageable
- They prefer keeping things in-house as a rule generally, as they believe that’s more straightforward / more confidential etc.
And some reasons why companies would outsource this to a recruitment agency:
- They don’t have the resource to manage internally
- They do have the resource, but recognise that managing a recruitment process internally is time consuming and costly – and ultimately they will save by using an agency
- They are recruiting for multiple roles at once (and therefore don’t have the resource to manage internally)
- They appreciate that a specialist recruitment agency has access to a wider network of high quality candidates as well as expert sector knowledge, and therefore can source a more suitable candidate than they would be able to
- They can advise on salary and benchmarking
From a candidate standpoint, their experience of the process could be quite different depending on whether it’s being done directly by the employer or through an agency.
What is the job of a company (in-house) recruiter?
In-house recruiters work as part of a business’s wider HR team, and their role is essentially to manage the full recruitment process from end to end.
They will work closely with the business to identify where the gaps are and then to fill these. They will work with the team to develop a job description and person specification, and then they will set about advertising the role and attracting candidates to apply. They will manage all applications, coordinate and potentially participate in interviews with the hiring manager, and advise on who they feel is the best candidate for the job.
Additionally as part of their role they may carry out salary benchmarking exercises and other market research to inform the business’s talent attraction strategy.
What is a corporate recruiter?
The term corporate recruiter could potentially have two meanings. On one hand it could essentially be what we’ve described above – an in-house recruitment professional.
Or alternatively, the same terminology could refer to a recruitment agency consultant who specialises in corporate (white-collar / office support) roles.
For instance, HR, finance, marketing, IT, etc. As well as HR recruitment Hunter Adams specialises in general corporate recruitment.
What makes a good corporate recruiter?
A good corporate recruiter (as opposed to a recruitment professional who specialises in just one role specialism) must have an excellent, broad-ranging knowledge of multiple role disciplines and specialisms – it’s not enough to know just one inside out. Likewise it’s not enough to have just a high-level understanding of several. If they are agency, they must also know their geographical market very well across all sectors.
They need to be able to turn their hand to any specialism (and depending on whether they are agency or in-house) within any sector, flipping between these as appropriate in a fast-paced working environment. This is a considerable skill and usually recruitment professionals in these roles need a lot of experience behind them. Those who are very experienced will also take on executive search assignments for more senior hires within the corporate sphere.
