Challenges of Recruiting in the Manufacturing Industry
Challenge #1 - Communication
One of the main challenges of recruiting in the manufacturing industry is understanding the experience of candidates. There are lots of factors in-play in order to make that right-fit hire. The challenge in technical recruitment is to clearly understand the role the candidate plays within the corporation. It is up to the Hiring Manager to see how well this experience fits into their own organization. Sometimes recruiters get the fit right but the challenge in technical recruitment is a lack of respect between the client and the recruiter. Corporations are intimidated by the ever-changing and complex recruitment process and candidates seem to get "Ghosted" or disrespected by recruiters.
Where do we (as agency recruiters) fall in this scenario? From the candidate side, recruiters always hear, “Recruiter's don't get back to me – how unprofessional”. Have you ever thought of working in the recruiter’s shoes? Corporations and companies rarely respond to recruiters when (we) submit our candidates. HR Professionals and Hiring Managers are ‘so busy’ with company politics, day-to-day operations that recruitment falls from their number 1 priority to number 15. HR Professionals rarely respond to recruiters (as they wait for their line managers for decisions). Because of this, it is hard for us (recruiters) to respond back to our candidates since (we) as middle-men have no answers to give.
Challenge #2 - Relationship Between Corporation and Recruiter
The fault here not only lies with the candidates, but also with the companies/corporations that recruiters deal with. The lack of respect between Corporation and Recruiter seems very apparent in today’s ever-tight recruitment market. HR Professionals want the role filled quickly and efficiently as possible. They would use many recruiters to fill 3 – 5 different roles as they would think the more recruiters they use, the faster they would fill the position. This way of thinking is counter-intuitive. Recruiters value their time. If they find too many recruiters working on open roles, Recruiters will just not take the assignment or move on to their next role. It is not uncommon to find recruiters working on 8-12 open job orders on their desk at any given time.
There is truth in this statement, however, this way of thinking can also backfire. For highly specialized positions in a specific industry, there is only a limited amount of candidates that can have the right qualifications for the job. Having an HR Professional sub out an order to 3-5 different agency recruiters is not the right way to go. Why? If there is limited supply, then the same recruiters would contact the same candidates for the same role. How is this ever efficient?
Challenge #3 - Recruiters Viewed as Necessary Evil
Thirdly, if a recruiter knows that multiple agencies are on the same role, there seems to be a lack of interest upon the recruiter to work harder and be dedicated to the actual position. We are viewed as a necessary evil where companies do not want to spend their capital on Recruitment or Engagement fees. They think they can do it themselves and save the money within the company.
The most common question I receive from HR Professionals is “Why do we need to pay a recruitment fee? Let’s source on our own”. With social media, Indeed and LinkedIN postings, the amount of resumes that are received by an internal HR department is and can be daunting. Usually, resumes range from the 100s to 1000s for one open position. Imagine putting an HR Generalist/Manager to ‘sift’, explore , examine and assess each individual resume/candidate and propose potential short-list candidates to the line managers. This can be a full time job where a company would have to pay a Recruiter $40,000+ to initiate this work-load. I'm sure an HR Generalist/Professional has more to look after regarding organization development, Labour relations/collective bargaining agreements and training on top of recruitment. They would be grateful having the ‘recruitment’ responsibility either be out-sourced or off-loaded to another agency or recruitment company.
"It's Just That Easy.... and That Difficult"
The Benefits of Recruiters
In conclusion, I think that HR Professionals partnering with the RIGHT agency recruiter is necessary in order to fill the role. The right agency can have a pulse (at any given time) of the market, understand market conditions and business politics. Agency recruiters should haver a solid business acumen and have an understanding of the players involved in a certain niche industry. Recruiters can bring forth candidates not seen by a traditional job board advertisement and companies can benefit from the recruiter’s market knowledge.
Is recruiting a necessary evil? All corporations need staff to grow or replace. We should not be looked upon as a necessary evil but a solid strategic business partner to the corporation. Recruiters have a solid pulse on their own market niche.
In all honestly, I believe we should be looked at as a solid business partner to the corporation. If you want to learn more how Campbell Morden can help you please send us a message!
