John Vlastelica argues recruiters should be talent advisors, not just sourcers. Hiring managers want strategic thinking, faster processes, and higher-quality hires. A talent advisor educates managers, pushes back on unrealistic demands, and co-creates sourcing and interviewing strategies.
Chapters
So how do we define success? How do we want our hiring managers to describe the relationship they have with us as recruiters? And what's our core value proposition as a recruiter? Is it just to fill Rex, just to manage a process, just take orders and please the customer? You know what I'm going to say? No, no, no. We want to be seen as, and operate as partners, subject matter experts, consultants and advisors. As a recruiter, our core value proposition is recruiting top talent for sure. But I believe it's also about making our hiring manager better hiring managers. Building hiring manager capability too is a key part of success for us. Now, I've talked to thousands and thousands of hiring managers in my career and I want to share with you some of the things that I hear across geographies, across industries. Things they want from us. First, no surprise, they want an even deeper understanding from us about their business and the roles we're recruiting for. They don't want just a bunch of keyword searching and sourcing, right? They want more strategy. Now do they know what strategy means? I'm not sure, but they know they want more strategy. Third thing is they want more insights. I teach a deep dive workshop on metrics for a lot of TA leaders and one of the things I'll share with you about insights that I find is really helpful is whenever you're sharing insights or report metrics, always think in your mind that they're probably thinking, so what now what? Right? They want insights that are like, so what is this good, is this bad? And then now what is it actionable? They want a faster process. It turns out I have the saying speed is the love language of hiring managers. And so they want to go faster and then of course they want higher quality candidates and hires a skinnier funnel. Hopefully the diversity is important to them and they want more of that as well. But for a lot of hiring managers, speed, quality, those are the big drivers. So bottom line, what is a talent advisor? Well, when you look through the lens of the business, it's a true partner and advisor earned through delivering speed, quality and diversity to the business. Now, I have another saying. Try harder is not a strategy. We can't just show up the same way we did yesterday and expect wildly different results and just work harder or hope that we're going to be seen as a talent advisor. The good news is when you operate like a talent advisor, you are a game changer. And as a talent advisor, you're really good at engaging, providing process leadership, educating hiring managers and pushing back when they're unrealistic. You co build strategies around sourcing, interviewing and selling that really feel like it's a we strategy or our strategy, not my strategy or your strategy. And of course, you influence the business to do what they need to do to get top talent. A talent advisor is a credible, respected partner in all things talent acquisition. So what does your success look like? Specifically, how do you and your manager know when you're operating as a talent advisor? I'll speak to that more in a future mission here. For now, I want to go deeper into the role we need to play in managing our hiring hiring manager relationships.
