Unlike most of the jobs that they help fill, the job of recruiter usually has no technical requirements, no experience requirements, no education requirements. There are no degree granting programs and there is precious little training available. These factors tend to make recruiters overly certain of what they are doing. For individual recruiters, it often seems like an art.

In most organizations, the recruiter is on the receiving end of lots of urgency. The hottest priority is often some politicized assignment rather than the next most important strategic issue. When you couple the lack of professional requirements/organization with the way the role is usually executed, you get a recipe for unstable and difficult to control costs.

Recruiters rarely get their heads above water long enough to see the entire system. Nonetheless, there is a system. And, like all systems, it can be articulated and improved. (If you haven't read it, our series on Lean Staffing might be informative.)

Our hero, John Gall, says

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.

At its simplest, Recruiting is the way that a business leader adds members to his/her team. At its most complex, it comprises 59 distinct steps (with one step that has an additional 17 sub steps). The problem has become the recruiting process. Waste laden and restrictive, the contemporary Recruiting process drives costs through the ceiling, makes companies too slow for the market and prevents companies from reaching their potential.

The combination of reactive posture and over complication make Recruiting a clear target for the waste removal tools that have worked so well in other settings. TQM, Six Sigma and Lean Thinking are tools that have been used repeatedly and successfully virtually everywhere else in the organization. They have landed here in the Recruiting Industry.

Tomorrow: Job Board In a Box

• What It Was Like
• What Happened I
• What Happened II
• What Happened III
• What Happened IV
• What Happened V
• What Happened VI
• Where It's Going I
• Where It's Going II
• What's Going On I: Recruiting
• What's Going On II: People
• What's Going On III: Older People
• What's Going On IV: Job Board Explosion
• What's Going On V: Waste Removal

John Sumser © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.
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