Corporate Recruiters Don't Actually

Recruiting means something. 

It means going out and enlisting help, or engaging someone to join your organization.

It's active. It's even proactive.

Unless you consider corporate recruiting. In that form of recruiting, it's incumbent on the recruit to be the active one. The corporate recruiters base all their activity on being reactive.

When you read the words “college recruiting” the images in your head are magical.

Trips to campus.

Meals with coaches.

A college showing young athletes that their skills are not just wanted but also highly coveted.

Every aspect of the process is carefully orchestrated to convey one simple fact—we want you more than everyone else does. For the next four years, we'll be your surrogate family.

When you read the words “corporate recruiting” the images are exactly and intensely opposite.

They’re mundane.

They’re exhaustive online forms that are a copy/paste from your résumé—that you must also attach.

They’re a mandatory list of references before you’ve even interviewed.

They’re a requirement to tell a possible employer what your salary history has been—so they can low-ball you or find a cheaper alternative.

As with college recruiting, every aspect of the corporate recruiting process is carefully orchestrated to convey a simple fact—we expect you to beg for a job. And to be grateful if you ever hear from us because we have hundreds of applicants and we can't possibly connect with all of them.

College recruiting is all about spotting, scouting and wooing talent.

Corporate recruiting is all about telling people you know to tell people they know that you have an open position, and they should send a résumé. Or posting on countless job sites. Or spamming social media networks. Or any of a hundred other less active ways of finding and securing talent. 

When you do submit a résumé and fill out the exhaustive online application, 99 times out of 100 you won’t receive a response.

Not even a form letter.

Let’s dispense with the pretense that HR Recruiters actually recruit.

They fill gaps in the corporate structure.

They’re caulk.

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