![babyjesus 150x150 Should Recruiting Report Into HR? [#ereexpo]](http://punkrockhr.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/babyjesus-150x150.jpg "babyjesus")
I caught wind of a discussion at ERE Expo.
- Should your recruiting department report into HR? Should it report into the business? Should it be a stand-alone function with as much power as marketing, sales, and R&D?
I’ve worked under several different models of recruiting. I ran a decentralized staffing function at Kemper Insurance. Guess what? None of it matters. The only thing that matters are results. Your reporting relationship is an excuse — not an explanation — for your inability to make a dent in the way that talent is acquired and managed at your company.
So here’s the answer to the great Recruiting/HR conundrum.
- Do your job.
- Do it with integrity.
- Fight mediocrity.
You could create the role of Senior Vice President, Recruiting who reports into Baby Jesus. Doesn’t make a difference if you can’t find and attract talented employees.
[PS - I would like to add one more thing: managers should own the employment life-cycle and be held accountable for the people whom they bring onto their teams. HR and Recruiting can continue to eat one another alive, or we band together and can shine a light on dysfunctional corporate practices embedded within our organizations.]
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I’m changing my title and bio to SVP of Recruiting reporting to the Baby Jesus. Totally sacrilegious and totally cool.
Agreed, if I were to ever go inside, I probably wouldn’t last because I would call BS on hiring practices that suck. As an independent, I can advise and help, I can show my clients what it’s like to hire right and hope that the begin to see the light. Maybe I influence change that way.
Dude, I’m with you. I don’t care where I report, I don’t care if I have an office, a cube or a closet. I just want to come in, kick @ss, and go home. I also don’t give a sh!t about titles, call me whatever you want, manager, recruiter, director, MC Hammer, I don’t care. I’ll get things done and done right and you pay me my money down.
Hells, yeah! Obsessing over procedural minutiae like HR job titles and reporting structures is what all-too-often gives HR a bad name. Talk about an eye-glazer….
First Benefits, then, Training, now Recruiting….everyone wants there own department and direct report to the CEO…Here is my angle: Get great candidates, work the full recruiting onboarding cycle…make the line responsible for the hire…add your 2cents (not 50)….
keep it all under one umbrella – I am so serious today!!!
-M
I’m with Mark on this one. Why is everyone wanting their department these days? Do these people feel disconnected from the top leaders? If so then I think they have bigger problems than if they are the SVP of Recruiting/Benefits/HR/burger flipping or whatever. All the departments need to work together to ensure the process goes smoothly anyway so whats the big deal?
There are many ways to skin a cat (so they say) and many ways to run a company. With regards to HR, Recruiting, or any other department, what matters most is communication and one common mission executed by every department.
maybe hr should report to recruiting ; )
From the Employee’s perspective–Right On, PunkRocker!! Just git ‘er done.
From the Organization’s perspective — The idea of having recruiting (which finds the people) not report to HR (which is responsible for all things people) can only be something concocted by third-party recruiters who have been trained to avoid HR at all costs.
That would be the same as saying Accountants shouldn’t fall under the….errr….Accounting Department.
Third-party recruiters need to learn better how to work with HR. I worked in recruiting for 10+ years and I too tried to avoid HR. Then I worked in HR and all of a sudden it all started to make sense. We third-party recruiters mistakenly think we understand HR. Until you’ve sat in HR’s shoes you have noooo idea.
Yay yay and woo hoo! Frankly, I hate recruiting because it’s so much TALK TALK TALK and little action. Our hiring managers make up our recruiting force (plus HR), and I want to beat my head against a wall. Recruiting is soooooooooooo farking time consuming, and the same mistakes and inefficiencies continue to be repeated. And then turf wars break out about just WHO is in charge of recruiting, who gets the mighty crown and scepter, who gets credit for hiring the geniuses. WHO CARES! I don’t want to be in charge of it, I don’t need anyone to make me queen of anything, I just want results!! I want the best employees we can get because that makes all of our jobs a hell of a lot easier and makes our business more successful. Why all the petty squabbles with this function?
In my experience, when people in a given company start talking about how recruiting should report to someone else, it’s because HR sucks.
When hiring managers get frustrated because their needs aren’t being met by HR, they look for ways to get around HR. When (internal) recruiters are frustrated because the rest of HR isn’t working with them, they look for ways to get around HR.
It doesn’t matter…provided HR doesn’t suck. Sadly, in some companies, it does, and that’s where this talk comes from.
I second your final paragraph wholeheartedly. Finance provides managers with budget tools and guidelines, but when a manager’s budget is out of whack, it’s his/her ass on the line. It should be the same way with recruiting. Not that we shouldn’t be dedicated to providing suck-free tools and guidelines, but I’ve never seen a manager get away with blaming crappy old Finance for their budget woes.
–from a learning & development professional who ADORES my recruiting colleagues
I have found that HR and Recruiting generally go hand in hand. And frankly, managers are hiring need to understand that when HR gives them suggestions on who to hire and not hire, they should listen. Because when they go over our heads to hire someone we’ve nixed, who is in our office 6 months later complaining that we need to get rid of the employee.
Coming from a small office where I did both HR and Recruiting and currently in a large office where I am a small section of HR with a separate Recruiting team, communication and cooperation are necessary. Otherwise bad hires have been made.
Major disconnect alert – I was in Recruiting, which was part of HR, but we were not not privvy to employee relations issues – things which affected MY line of business. I got a call one day from a distraught Hiring Manager in a distant state – she lost 5 employees in one fell swoop – the plug had been pulled (news to me). HR, one floor down from me BTW, knew this was brewing for weeks; the HM assumed HR and Recruiting (being same department) talked and shared info. HM figured she was talking to HR (and I was part of HR), so she assumed I knew and would already have some pipeline candidates. Obvious #fail all around.
Oh – and HR had Recruiting ‘blocked” from viewing parts of the HRIS. If a candidate applied who stated they were a previous employee, I had to call one of the HR Assistants to look it up for me; I couldn’t view those records. Talk about dysfunctional.
@Nelking Boy I love that title. It’s pretty much the best HR title ever.
@Puf I’m pretty sure you should now be referred to, “Puf — the MC Hammer of HR.”
@Ken Moir I know, I’m already bored with my own blog post. That’s a bad sign.
@MarkF You’re solving all the great problems. I love it.
@adowling That’s right. You need your own department because the CEO has nothing better to do than micromanage the way you hire a network administrator.
@David Thank you, exactly. No skinned or dead cats, though. Not on my watch.
@Amanda I’m pretty sure HR comes before Recruiting in the alphabet so we’ll just keep HR as the umbrella org.
@bn I totally cut out a piece of my post where I wrote about mediating an argument between the cost accounting group at a former employer who revolted and wanted to report to the plant manager and not the CFO. Barf.
@HAria Obviously you need a better ATS and CRM system in your company to make recruiting easier. Here, let me sell you some proprietary software that costs more than the GDP of Mongolia so you can better manage the process.
@Kerry You nailed it. Sadly, it all comes back to HR sucking. Unfortunately, recruiting functions can be just as dysfunctional.
@Kristy Yes. You get it!
@EditorDee Thanks. Isn’t life always about communication?
@RobinS I hate the tiered system of information. If you’re part of HR and work with the same clients, have a conversation and operate with transparency. Sheesh. I hate when HR hoards information like that. Barf x100.
Kerry is my new hero!
HR sucks most of the time— but aren’t they supposed to suck? Isn’t there an Human Resourse Sucks Certificate out there somewhere??? I coulda sworn I saw one..
I think I’m just going to “ditto” EditorDee.
I’ve got nothing more substantial to add to that, Dee nailed it.
@ann She’s my hero, too.
@mattymat I love it. We need to offer the SUX certification.
@tlocolson Perfect!
Ooh, nicely put. I want to report to Baby Jesus!
Recruiting & HR are one and the same for my organization. I can’t imagine the two not being mixed. Recruiting for a position that no longer exists.. now that’s efficiency!
As Ebby Laloosh (Tim Robbins character) said in Bull Durham…”This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.” Think about that for a while.
How does that apply? Its simple..You source the people, you recruit the people and you connect hiring managers and candidates together. Recruiting should just be allowed to use their creativity to find qualified talent that helps drive bottom line revenue-that’s what makes me love what I do. It doesnt not matter where we sit or who we report to. We just play the game that we love the most…finding and connecting talent.
We in the Diversity & Inclusion side of the house have the same discussion all the time. Many feel “hemmed in” by reporting through the CHRO, and believe that any organization “really” committed to D&I will employ a Chief Diversity Officer. But all of our research tells us what you’ve said, in a much simpler and more entertaining way: it don’t matter.
Ideally, though – we’re talking in a perfect world with all things being equal, I’d prefer to work in a Diversity team that reports to a CDO who reports directly to the CEO – and here’s why: 1) Diversity & Inclusion is as much about one’s customers as it is about one’s workforce, and sometimes doing some crucial work around expanding into diverse customer markets is prevented by being structurally “inside” HR … and 2) D&I teams have a mission to fundamentally change the culture of an organization, while HR teams don’t always share that mission. And in cases where the HR team is really all about working with and enforcing the rules as they are, it can be very, very difficult for D&I folks to get much done inside that particular silo.
But, when what’s done is done – if the CHRO believes in Diversity and is willing to walk the walk around it … it’s all good.