Despondent to Admirable - The APPEAL in Recruitment as a Career

"Sir actually due to recession only CONSULTANCY COMPANIES are coming to hire at our campus. Actually I want to become an HR Generalist, that's why I want to get into recruitment so that I can make a beginning."

These are very common statements I get to hear when I come across fresh talents all set to embark upon the BIG BAD corporate world. Surprisingly even experienced professionals think on similar lines many a times. Thus, thought of putting my views down in favour of a sustained career in one of the KEY FUNCTIONS in HR Consulting.

Firstly would like to state that "Consultancy Companies" don't mean a Job Shop. Rather it would be more appropriate to term them as either a Consulting or a Consultant or even a Consultancy Services Company. Any entity which provides its knowledge based service depending upon its expertise to its clients would be termed a Consultant. It can be as diverse as a Fashion Consultant, Legal Consultant, Financial Consultant & then of course HR Consultants. Again among HR Consultants, there are Strategic Consultants, Process Consultants (Any HR process) as well as the most common, Recruitment Consultants, It is very important for an individual aspiring to make a career in HR to know & more importantly, UNDERSTAND this.

Then again, there's the concept of being in "Main Operations" or "Support Function" of an organisation. For an HR Consulting firm (Any), HR activities, be it recruitment or anything else is a revenue earning factor and for an organisation from any other industry like Banking, IT, ITES etc, HR becomes a support function as their Revenue earning activities are different.

If I start talking about all the aspects, this post in my blog might start looking like a BOOK, thus, I would limit myself to RECRUITMENT.

Recruitment is one of the most important function as Manpower is & would always be the most significant & indispensable resource in any Industry. Be it the main operations of an HR Consulting Company or even a part of the Support function in any other industry, it has a DIRECT IMPACT on the overall profitability.

In my opinion, the characteristics which make it powerful are as under :

1. Enables Cost Projection thus enables proper pricing of Products or Services : Recruitment Function with its Market Intelligence enables an organisation to know the "Cost of Resources" thus while designing cost proposals, it's useful.

2. Feasibility Ascertainment of Delivery Capability for New Business : Recruitment function helps to ascertain & execute whether a certain project or task can be executed in a certain span of time as it tells whether the number of people needed can be hired & in how much time.

3. Succession Planning : Recruitment Function is the base which triggers off the intake of resources keeping in mind the succession planning, considering the scalability of business & resources.

4. Quality of Delivery : Recruitment Functions play the major role in determining the "Quality Of Resources hired" which has a direct impact on an organisation's delivery.

5. Impact on Opportunity Cost : An "Agile" Recruitment process ensures that opportunity cost is mitigated by never letting any gaps to be there in Resource Availability.

6. Identifying a "Right Fit" : It's not always the question of the level of competency of a resource, rather, it's about the "Appropriate Fitment" of a resource in a particular role, which is ascertained by the Recruitment Function. This plays a major part in initiating Job Satisfaction & controlling attrition.

7. Creating a Homogenous Culture : The Recruitment function follows a certain defined pattern bringing in "Like minded" people on board, which creates a cultural balance in the organisation many a times resulting in "Signature" patterns.

8. Role in Brand Image Creation : Recruitment as a function acts as a good tool in propagating the Brand Image of an organisation. The candidates who go through the process get a feel of the organisation which then gets cascaded to many. The fact that a company is hiring, indicates that their business is flourishing.

(See my post titled Recruitment Process – An Important Employer Branding Tool @ http://randomstrokez.blogspot.com/2010/01/recruitment-process-important-employer.html)

9. Clear Measurement Metrics : The metrics used to measure the effectiveness of Recruitment as a Function, which is predominantly number driven, is very transparent which enables gaps to be identified & fixed appropriately.

10. Process Oriented : This removes the dependence on a particular person to have this function executed effectively. The strong process oriented nature of this function makes it uniform perpetually.

In a nut-shell, we can say that Recruitment Function MAKES or BREAKS an organisation. So do not look at Recruitment as a stopgap or an out of compulsion choice of career, but make the most of being a part of an indispensable function & canonise your value-add prospect towards the organisation you are a part of... & GROW.....