15 people on the chest of the dead: the distribution of tasks in recruiting

"Fifteen people on the dead man's chest."
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink, and the devil will bring you to the end.
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! ”

Recently, I began to worry about the organization of work in the recruitment department. It happened after 25 vacancies fell on me. When I tried to understand how to approach them, and tried to sort them by priority, by technological similarity, by customer, by possible work scenario, I realized that in fact such sorting is a cunning science, which in itself requires detailed studying.
Once I heard from my colleague the phrase “the process is not important to me, the result is important to me”. And although I am also a person of results, and it is extremely important for me to see the fruits of my work, I increasingly realize that the competent organization of this process itself greatly influences the results of work.
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Below I will try to give a certain classification of how you can organize work on vacancies in the recruiting department, and along the way I will think a little about roles in recruitment. I draw all these conclusions based on my experience, so I do not exclude gaps in my perception, and I will be grateful for constructive criticism.


1. Separation by locations.

Now I work on two markets: Minsk and Moscow. Immediately, I thought that it would be more correct to divide recruiters into locations, but in fact such a division may not always provide an equal burden for all recruiters in the company. Yes, and I, for example, is motivated by the development of new “lands”. And not only from the point of view of hunting space, but also because it is possible to compare the market, tools, and even methods of work. Such an analysis expands the horizons and develops the specialist, so that the separation by locations is canceled.

2. Separation by technology.

More appropriate is the separation of technologies. For example, staffing the same direction in different offices. Such an approach would give certain advantages in the work of competent specialists: at a minimum, it would help to determine the most favorable territory for the development of a particular expertise in the company. However, this approach also has disadvantages: firstly, if the direction is large, then the recruiter will have to work only for him, which can get boring and even oppose, although it cannot be denied that the more a recruiter’s experience with a certain technological stack is, the more productive Job. From the obvious advantages:

• less time is spent on analyzing vacancies and clarifying requirements,
• more understanding of the vacancy itself and the essence of the work,
• less time is spent on compiling search queries for keywords, it is possible that there are already ready query templates that can be used,
• there is an understanding of the market and a list of donor companies,
• there are job templates that require small changes (and making vacancies from scratch is very time consuming),
• There is a pool of candidates who can be "rally" in contact.

3. Separation by customer.

With this approach, one should not lose sight of the fact that there can be different customers for the same technologies within the company, which increases the recruiter’s communications flow, and hence its load. In addition to the time spent on working with different customers, it is also necessary to take into account the difference in business domains. Who faced with the set for different businesses, he can understand that the same Java gets completely different shades when we talk about the development of banking products, or telecom applications. Moreover, in addition to the deep differences in requirements, the company's selection for different business domains may differ in the process, which again takes time to switch and communication, as well as from time to time may cause some confusion, therefore, with this approach, it is necessary to lay a margin of time and patience on recruiter errors. =)

4. The combination of several directions.

And what if the company has a wide technological spectrum, and 1-2 vacancies are open for each? In this case, the only way out is to divide the work of one recruiter (or bundles of a recruiter-assistant) into several technological areas. With this approach, management’s compliance with several conditions is extremely important:

• prioritization of vacancies and directions,
• Regular status updates and feedback
• help in solving organizational issues.

From the recruiter is required:

• understanding priorities and acting on them,
• good planning of your time
• keeping reports and detailed history in all directions,
• drawing up the maximum number of templates.

This approach, when one recruiter leads in several directions, seems to me the most difficult, because in such work one has to constantly analyze and take into account large flows of information, moreover, it’s hard not to slip into working on a “favorite”, the simplest or most complex job and not “Run” others. Such a “neglect” is extremely conducive to the passivity of the customer. I know for myself that work is being done more actively on those vacancies for which you are pulling at and asking about news at least once a day. And when you wait for a response after an interview or agree on a job offer for two weeks, this in itself de-motivates and significantly slows down the work.

5. Work in parallel with other recruiters on several vacancies.

Sometimes several recruiters are appointed to reinsure the same complex job. This may have a positive effect, however, only with the proper coordination of their work, otherwise it makes absolutely no sense, since very time consuming and careless in terms of resource sharing. When organizing such work it is important:

• Provide a single input and output stream of information , i.e. One recruiter communicates with the customer when removing the requirements, clarifying, presenting candidates, deciding on them, or clarifying the requirements takes place at a general meeting, where all involved recruiters are present, but this can also take an unreasonably long amount of time.
• Clearly divide the roles , for example, assign a lead, who will be in charge of the process, the rest should determine the roles of resellers and recruiters, again in order to avoid “doing” all recruiters of the same work.
• Divide the recruitment process into separate tasks and assign them to different people : the most meaningful I see the process of dividing the work into tools: one recruiter “combing” the base, the second - sites for posting vacancies, the third - forums, communities, recommendations of colleagues, the fourth - social networks.
• To ensure that the colleagues work for each other is fully visible , in order to avoid duplication of information, and to save time and resources, this will allow recruiters to complement each other, while not competing for candidates.

6. Division of work according to tasks.

This option of recruiting seems to me the most controversial and difficult to implement. Reseller / assistant division => recruiter => team lead, etc. not according to the seniority of the position and “epaulets”, but according to duties it should be carried out very carefully, the edges of transitions from position to position are very blurred.
Now, as a recruiter, I really lack an assistant who could:

• Maintain lists of candidates, keeping them up-to-date and standardized information (single spelling, company names, list of skills, form of comments);
• keep the base up to date;
• prepare reports at the request of management, i.e. “Combing” icels, create pivot tables;
• create email invitations for interviews;
• send candidates letters of invitation for an interview and collect confirmations;
• create texts of vacancies and post them on available resources.

However, as a recruiter, I would not want to delegate:

• creating search queries;
• search and first contact with candidates
• evaluation of candidates and the "sale" of vacancies,
• telephone screening,
• communication at the interview
• giving feedback to the candidate.

All processes related to communication with candidates cannot be divided hierarchically, since this will only cause confusion and loss of information. One candidate must be led from start to finish by one recruiter, an assistant can help him only in manual work, otherwise we are talking about a different interaction scenario (see clause 5).
On the other hand, it takes a lot of time and effort to guide myself, no matter how funny it may sound. Therefore, I am sure that the recruiting team needs a manager or lead to solve the following questions:

• distribution of tasks
• prioritization of vacancies,
• holding status rallies,
• collecting and analyzing reports
• decision making on strategy change,
• assistance in identifying errors / bottlenecks and work to eliminate them,
• performance of the role of "pressure lever" to the customer.

Thus, a certain hierarchy can still exist, but in it it is important to divide the roles functionally and for each specialist to designate a clear area of ​​responsibility and responsibilities.

In my analysis, I spoke only about the part of work related to recruiting, and did not touch Eyuchar at all, although sometimes even in large companies these two functions have to be combined by one specialist. In such a situation, there is only an increasing need for a competent leader who sees all the processes and tasks and knows how to organize work on them.
In addition, I did not touch on the system of growth, development and remuneration of recruiters, but this is still another topic, although it is directly related to the distribution of responsibilities.

I hope to receive feedback from you on which principle of work organization you use, and which principle seems to be the most optimal for you? I would also like to receive healthy criticism if I missed something or did not consider it.