In-House Insights: 28 Insights, Learning Points And New Revelations I Gained Working As An In-House Recruiter
When you move In-House you are at the start of the journey.
That journey like all journeys has its good points and bad points, its hills to climb and its nice country pubs to sit at and enjoy lunch at and walking for miles wet and sodden because it just will not stop raining.
One of the key things to remember when you do move In-House is that you are walking up two learning curves.
Transitioning to an In-House Recruitment role transformed my approach and taught me 28 invaluable lessons.
First Learning Curve: New Company, New Culture
Entering a new workplace means learning the stated and implied rules, adapting to the company culture, understanding the lingo, getting to know new colleagues, and familiarizing yourself with the premises
It will mean that you are, in your first 30 and 100 days, going to be inundated with new information to absorb, new habits to learn and plenty of new names.
Walking up this curve is soft-skills focused. It means developing a range of new inter-personal approaches, learning a new work culture and language.
Second Learning Curve: New Job, New Responsibilities
While you have experience in Recruitment, transitioning from an Agency to an In-House role involves adapting to new responsibilities and processes specific to internal Recruitment.
There are many big and small changes that you will have to take on over the coming weeks and months. Some of the responsibilities will be similar others will be very different.
This learning curve will be testing your ‘hard’ Recruitment skills. This includes learning more about onboarding, budgets, headhunting, advertising and you are navigating candidate attitudes towards your brand.
These learning curves acted as superb teachers. Below captures the many things about Recruitment, hiring, and staffing that I learned during my time working In-House.
28 Lessons and Insights From Working ‘In-House’
Chemistry
In-House Recruitment is not about speed, quality or process, it is still all about candidate-Hiring Manager chemistry. Indeed, according to StandOut CV 33% of managers know they are going to hire a candidate in the first minute.
It's surprising how often hiring decisions come down to chemistry. Your goal is to ensure every candidate you present is of the highest quality (in regards to skills and abilities) to maximize the chances of a successful match being competent.
This is of course not to say that all hiring is about likability or ‘chumminess’. It means that interpersonal factors are very important.
Inconsistency
Organisations will often exhibit inconsistency in their hiring processes due to fluctuating needs and unpredictable human behavior. Embrace flexibility and maintain consistent Recruitment values to navigate this challenge. From the time of Ramses the Second (imagine the temp spend to build a pyramid) to our present day, hiring has a habit of becoming inconsistent as people are not predictable, and business needs change over time.
The only way to deal with this is to try and keep your core Recruitment value consistent.
Care
Engagement levels among Hiring Managers will vary. Some will be deeply invested in the process and candidates, while others may be indifferent due to business.
Finding ways to align their interests with Recruitment goals is crucial.
What they care about and what you care about in the Recruitment process will not always align.
Sometimes this can be glossed over, and sometimes it will cause a fight.
Always try to see things from their perspective.
Problems
Many problems exist in both Agency and In-House Recruitment. This is because those problems are universal to all Recruiters and hiring processes.
Candidates will ghost interviews. Hiring Managers will say the wrong thing. Dave in accounts will tell candidates about his taxidermy hobby and scare the only candidate off. Candidates will get counter-offered, and accept. The candidate will fill in all the paperwork, tell you how excited they are too and will quit after one day.
These Recruitment problems (and more are universal) to the Recruitment process, they will not disappear after leaving the agency.
Getting a ‘Yes’
Acceptance rates for job offers will be higher, MUCH HIGHER.
I found this hard to grasp initially. How many more people say yes to roles offered by the company directly rather than by the Agency?
Until it dawned on me that companies rarely go to agencies for the “easy fill”, they are only going to agencies after they have exhausted the other options.
It was pretty obvious, however having it spelt out was a real ‘lightbulb’ moment when experiencing it firsthand.
Budgets
Expect higher acceptance rates for job offers In-House compared to Agency placements. This is because companies typically approach agencies only after exhausting other options, making direct offers more appealing to candidates.
Spending 20% on Recruitment fees on top of a new candidate's salary will make sense, giving the staff member who left a 5% pay rise to stay does not.
This logic plays itself out in all sorts of ways across organisations. It is one of those consistent issues with big organisations both private and public that many Recruitment-related financial decisions will just not make sense to those at the ‘coal face’.
Generally, there is little that you can do about this to change it.
Your budgets will also never be as big as you need. Accept this and life will be less stressful.
LinkedIn will still be your friend. A very, very expensive friend. Think of the kind of friend who you love going out on nights out with, who is a right ‘laugh’.
However, they never, ever buy a pint or pick up a bar tab. And always conveniently never has battery when ordering an Uber.
The power of LinkedIn to attract candidates is unparalleled in the whole of human history.
LinkedIn Recruiter is still going to be a tool that you can be going to need to use every day, FOREVER. You will never escape Linked In, so just buy them that drink and enjoy the mayhem.
Recruitment Consultants
You will spend a lot of time cringing and laughing at Recruiters' emails and cold calls. Try to stay professional when this happens.
To think that some of these mistakes myself. It is ‘cringe’.
My favourite still comes down to the Recruiter who phoned to pass off that my boss's boss had given in the say-so to recruit for a role and got both there name and role title wrong, and said I just had to agree terms.
Shockingly poor sales tactics were a constant from many Agencies that I dealt with. Everything from being called the wrong name on an email to having a competitor's job discussed, to asking what they “could do for me” to get on the Preferred Supplier List (PSL).
If you are reading this and want to stay in Agency Recruitment, focus on being a professional salesperson. It will be a great USP and make you stand out from the crowd..
Avoidance
You will also spend a lot of time avoiding these emails and calls from the above-mentioned Recruiters.
There are just not enough hours in the day to take all the calls, especially if you are in a very visible company.
Your time is precious, do not waste it so they can fill there call quotas.
Family And Friends
Handling applications from friends and family members diplomatically is key to maintaining professional integrity.
You will see a lot of ‘nepo baby’ CVs and Resumes and will have to humour many applications from friends and family members who do not have the qualifications for the role.
Much of this is well meaning from family members and the word nepotism might be stretching the well-meaningness into something sounding nefarious.
Generally, it will have good intentions, but be helpfully from a Recruiters perspective.
Key Performance Indicators
You will be surprised how few Key Performance Indicators are tacked compared with agencies.
Agency life is dominated by the multitude of Key Performance Indicators, some In-House roles will not track any.
Which does make you realise that some agencies are tracking too many “key” indicators.
If there is a Key Performance Indicator vacuum make sure that you fill it for both your sanity and to help you stay personally responsible. It will also help you standout internally.
Relationships
You will HATE some of your Hiring Managers, and love others. However, you will not be able to choose which ones you work with.
This will be a feature of working In-House as you do not have the option of who you work with (unlike Agency).
You are for better or worse you are stuck with them.
Human Resources
If you have been a Recruiter for a long time, Human Resource departments can feel like Frenemies (friendly-enemies). Especially if you and the Hiring Manager are being a wee bit cheeky.
Once I moved ‘In-House’ they became friends, both work friends and allies in the organisation. Most In-House roles are generally based within Human Resources so day to day this is now your home.
When an Agency HR felt like the baddie stopping me from making placements or heaven forbid negotiating me down to 15%, having now worked ‘In-House’ I now understand more fully and holistically why things are, the way they are.
Application Volume
The volume of applications vis-a-vis agencies is intense. I do not have exact figures from when I was recruiting myself as an Agency Recruiter versus In-House however, for some roles the volumes easily hit 3 times as many and for some occasional roles, the volume was 10 times as much.
Anything remote, working from home, or looking like an entry-level or low-skill role was inundated. It was at times stressful. This is understandable as one in five employees according to the charity Mind, take illness days due to workplace stress.
However, in the world of Recruitment, it is always better to have too many candidates rather than too few.
Candidate Quality
The quality of applications will also be low.
It is amazing how many applications would be so far out of contention that it would at times be painful, to reject so many candidates.
The number of visa-hunting applications is also much, much higher as well.
Part of this is due to the way that digital advertising and applications have made roles easy to find and also have zero friction in the application.
This reduced quality does make going to the talent market on a proactive basis a very sensible strategy. Application Tracking Systems
The Application Tracking System (ATS) will be different for better or worse.
The nature of working In-House is that the system will have to be used differently.
This indifference will mean many things, but diligence when dealing with data entry will matter for both you and the organisation in the future.
Many organisations do not use the right ATS or use the ATS correctly.
Less Headhunting
You will be able to do less “headhunting” if you wish.
Many roles will fill themselves with the nature applications that come from putting adverts up on LinkedIn, Indeed etc.
So you will have to do less of the gut-wrenching outreach. However, I am a big advocate of proactive headhunting over adverts (when possible) as it is more personal and enjoyable.
Indecisive Managers
Some managers do not know what they need, even when it is sitting in front of them.
Others will not know how to make a decision, others will only make decisions at the last minute.
One or two managers will take up 80% of your time being indecisive.
Candidates will be lost to indecisive managers. This is something you will be able to mitigate but not eliminate.
Highly Effective Managers
For every indecisive Hiring Manager, there will be a highly effective manager who will be a dream to work with, they will ‘get Recruitment’ and you will miss them when you have filled their vacancy.
Politics, Politics, Politics
Internal politics will make the horse-trading of Washington and Westminster look pleasant and tame.
Ego, silliness and pettiness will all come into play over whether to hire a one-day-a-week administrator on minimum wage.
For some reason the smaller the role the more nonsense it will attract and the more upset it will cause.
I have no explanation for this.
Headlines
Advert headlines will attract 95% to 99% of all applicants (this is a guestimate from me, there is no science behind it).
Applicants will not read the job advert which will affect the quality of applications. According to Dovetail Recruitment, a UK-based Recruitment Agency 90% of candidates do not read the job description.
It is a sad state of affairs that this is the case, however, from a candidate's perspective it is understandable given the nature of online applications. Moving ‘In-House’ confirmed to me that this is a universality within Recruitment and not just something that affects Agency Recruitment.
Repetition
You will fill some roles again, and again and again.
Sometimes for obvious reasons, other times for less obvious reasons.
At times it will be fine. Others it will be boring.
This comes with the territory when working In-House.
Better Banter
The conversations with colleagues will be more diverse than at the Agency as the people you work with will generally have a more diverse range of backgrounds.
I learned to talk more about normal things than ‘closing calls’ or bemoaning why candidates are the way they are and had far more interesting professional and personal conversations.
Even candidate calls are more interesting as candidates seem to be more open with internal recruiting professionals than with Agency Recruiters.
Same Old, Same Old
Recruitment is still Recruitment at the end of the day.
Many of the good and bad things about Recruitment as a job will continue through into an In-House role.
Some of these problems will be diminished, and others will be enhanced.
Agencies
You will vow to never use agencies.
You will end up using agencies more than you wanted.
And begrudgingly you will come to use them for certain roles.
There will always be THAT ONE Agency/Recruiter that you hate, that somehow keeps filling roles.
Rogue Managers
You will end up hiring a candidate that was “behind the back” and it will cause massive amounts of hassle. Why? Because a manager or executive in a department went ahead and accepted terms without telling you or human resources.
Hiring is not a Hiring Manager's day job. They are generally just looking to get things sorted for their team. This means they can end up engaging Recruiters without telling the right people or going through the right process.
It does happen a lot more than you realise from the Agency side of Recruitment.
Lies
Managers and HR will lie to Recruiters about using Recruitment agencies.
Every.
Single.
Day.
So will you, to get them off the phone.
Panic Hires
Last-minute desperation hires are a “thing”. And rarely work out, you will need to battle against this constantly.
Especially with Hiring Managers who have not read your last 27 emails, listened to your 12 voicemails or turned up to three meetings about the candidate shortlist
Spooky
Candidates will ghost interviews, telephone calls, offers, first days, and first weeks.
Employees will even fall off the radar after years at a company for no reason.
The world of a Recruiter is a spooky place.
My Thoughts
As you can see much of what I learned about Recruitment whilst working In-House I already knew, I just did not realise that In-House Recruitment and Agency Recruitment are both very similar.
Recruitment is Recruitment at the end of the day. However, there is always more to learn, to develop and to grow. In-house recruitment offers new ways to do this.
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