From Agency Recruitment to Corporate Recruitment
After working my entire career within “Agency Recruitment”, or Recruitment for a commercial recruitment agency, I started as a Corporate Recruiter in September 2022. I’ve been “on the other side of the table” ever since. Where I used to always send external candidates to HR advisors, hiring managers, or Corporate Recruiters, I am now the recipient of these candidates. I am now responsible for following up and making sure that the candidates go through our application procedures. Quite a big switch, bigger than I had thought in advance.
What are the major differences?
Less emphasis on Sourcing
As an Agency Recruiter, there was a great emphasis on sourcing for me. I was spending most of the day finding candidates through various channels. After candidates had been interviewed, it was my task to bring them to the attention of the right clients. From here the client takes over. My contact person within the organization keeps me informed, but I usually don’t get all the details and context involved in decision-making and conversations.
As a Corporate Recruiter, the emphasis of my work somewhat depends on the number of vacancies and the number of hours I get per week. If I have 20 vacancies to fill, and I work 20 hours, then I only have 1 hour per week per vacancy. Every week something happens for most vacancies (conversations with candidates, job applications, conversations with hiring managers, arranging ongoing conversations, etc.), which quickly creates a number of vacancies that do not receive any attention in terms of sourcing, or at least not enough. I myself prefer to work 4 hours per vacancy per week, so I know for sure that the vacancy gets the attention it deserves. Unfortunately, this is not always possible.
More layers of complexity
In my view, the work as a Corporate Recruiter has several layers of complexity. Sourcing and assessing applicants is one, but there is also a lot of internal politics and communication that I have to take into account. Every hiring manager requires a slightly different communication style. Each vacancy is slightly different. For some vacancies, it is extremely important to know the context. Because I work in a field with a tight labor market, I often have to think creatively with candidates, for this a piece of context about where the organization and department stands and is going is crucial. However, it is up to me to ensure that I receive this information. If I don’t set anything up and don’t ask for this, I won’t get this information.
More pressure
A big difference in my view is pressure. As an agency recruiter, you basically earn nothing if you don’t place candidates (from a self-employed person’s perspective in this case). This hurts financially, but does not put great pressure on clients. When I don’t find the right candidate, too bad, but it didn’t cost them anything either. If you do place, there will be positivity and all parties (employer, candidate, recruiter) will be happy.
As a Corporate Recruiter, I experience that there is a certain expectation to fill vacancies (and rightly so!). After all, you are paid per hour and you are brought in as an expert. It is then up to me to determine what the vacancy should look like, what our chances are, how and where to recruit, and what actions to take. If I eventually place a candidate, then that’s nice, but it was the expectation. If I don’t post, I will definitely hear about that.
Closer to the fire
As a Bureau Recruiter, I found and find it difficult that you are far removed from the business. Candidates can be canceled for reasons that are sometimes difficult to understand from the outside. In addition, it can sometimes take a long time before you receive a response (this was such an urgent vacancy, wasn’t it?). My time as a Corporate Recruiter has given me a different perspective on this. An awful lot is happening in an organization, a vacancy is alive. The longer a vacancy is open, the greater the chance that we will relax in terms of requirements. Many job postings have a context that is too long and specific to squeeze into a job posting. But this is still part of the vacancy. Sometimes it can be difficult from the outside to understand how people arrive at a certain decision because you don’t get a lot of internal communication. As a Corporate Recruiter, you are involved in that internal communication. In fact, you are often the initiator of the conversation and you are the central point of communication. Having this point of view has taught me how complex a vacancy and how to fill it can be.
More sense of urgency vacancies within the organization
Here comes another important point, urgency. As a Corporate Recruiter I sometimes get calls from agencies: what are the urgent vacancies at the moment? A more than justified question, because that is where the chance is greatest that we will quickly press ahead and invite proposed candidates. However, it often happens that 1 week (or less) later, things have changed so that priorities are different. I don’t always have the time or memory to notify these agencies again. I understand the frustration of some agencies when they present a candidate 2 weeks later, and the vacancy is no longer urgent. I myself have experienced it from the other side more than once. This makes it nice to start a close collaboration as a company with a number of suppliers and to keep them well informed. These are also the type of collaborations that I prefer as an agency recruiter.
In conclusion, I notice that Corporate Recruitment has more to do with HR (which I studied for my bachelor’s) than Agency Recruitment. You are in the middle of an organization and you have to create a place for yourself. This is not always easy, but very important. In my current job, I really feel part of the HR team, and I get to know a part of what is going on within an organization. I learn a lot, especially organizationally, something I missed as a Commercial Recruiter. A job like Corporate Recruiter is much more all-round, while a job like Bureau Recruiter is much more specialized. At the moment I do both, which is probably the best, a nice combination!
