Either-Or: why using only one recruiting technique is stupid

If you – as I do – read the recruiting industry press regularly, you quickly become aware of a pattern: ‘something’ has arrived that will negate every other recruiting technique you use. ‘Something’ will ‘revolutionize’ your recruiting, solve all your problems, and possibly help you lose weight and become rich, too.

I kid you not. Read through the back issues/blog posts/whatever of Workforce, HR.com, RecruitingBlogs, ERE, etc., and see for yourself. Facebook. LinkedIn. Social recruiting. Aggregators. People aggregators. Predictive analytics. Job boards (well, back in the late 90s!). “It’s like LinkedIn for (insert your sector)!” “It’s like Tindr for (insert your problem)!” And so on. Everyone has their favorite recruiting technique.

Do I sound cynical? A little, maybe?

Well…maybe. But it’s a cynicism born of frustration with how the ‘new’ must destroy the ‘old’. I’m a liberal arts kind of guy. I believe that multiple techniques and approaches can yield the best solutions to thorny problems like hiring great people. If you’re on the demand side of the fence – i.e., the person doing the hiring – you know what you want. Someone who can do the job, do it well, someone who fits in with the rest of your team, someone who is not going to quit in two months and make you start the whole hiring process over again.

I also know that the people that hire are not stupid (usually). They already know that using one and only one hiring technique or tool is not going to yield the best results. Why? Because hiring is complicated. Because finding the right people, convincing them to join an organization, and then stay – well, that’s complicated too. So if the hirer devotes 100% of the hiring budget to LinkedIn, they’ll probably live to regret that decision. Same goes for devoting 100% of the budget to any of the ‘revolutionary’ tools listed above.

Why am I telling you, the online recruiting and job board professional, this? Because you live in this ecosystem. You’re out there pitching your solution, just like the rest of us. But you know what can give you an unfair advantage with your current and potential customers? Acknowledge that there is no ‘one solution’ – not even yours. Instead, show them how you can solve a part of their hiring challenges.

Remember – hiring is not either/or. And your solution shouldn’t be, either.

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