When the Recruiter becomes the Recruited
The first step to recruit a recruiter is spotting one. With such an important role, it’s key that we have the best person for this job in order to succeed. But how do you know who will be good at recruiting? What kind of sly tricks and crafty machinations are wielded to spot, engage and recruit the ultimate recruiter? According to one of our more eagerly anticipated Hire18 speakers, turns out it’s mostly a matter of having a solid product – namely your company culture or mission statement!
As quick as you can, Sarah – don’t think too much: How does one go from growing up in a remote series of airbase-adjacent Canadian towns to department head in Silicon Valley?
Slowly. Very slowly. It’s American Thanksgiving, and having celebrated the harvest time holiday on its proper seasonally accurate Canadian date back in October, Sarah is taking full advantage of the silence to redact entries on her long yellow legal pad list
With the last three months as Head of People, she has her work cut out for herself. A long list that is both daunting and ominous; but more than this makes it seem like a dream come true. “Yes,” Sarah replies after taking up on Indigo’s offer to become their manager back in 2017 where she was able to train others how best they could serve customers at Canada’s Biggest Bookstore by getting them hands dirty again with day-to-day tasks such as working in the boardroom or delegating responsibilities outside of your particular expertise area just doesn’t make sense anymore when you’re doing what you love: playing in the sandbox and seeing results right before your eyes!
In some ways, the HR Tech industry is facing more change than it ever has before. That’s because in 2017 there are a lot of new companies that have never entered this space and are bringing their own unique ideas to an old-fashioned profession. As such, traditional players need not be so risk-averse as they once were; what was once considered disruptive can now become part of the plan for success with enough open minds on board from all sides.”
From stacking and sorting CVs in filing cabinets to storing names on a computer, the technology has progressed rapidly over time. Sarah knew that she had always been an early adapter of new technologies after using multicolored sticky tabs as her first system for tracking applicants when they were still expensive.
These are terms you hear thrown around in social media circles: endeavours spoken about with post-Bezos jargon; tech sectors far more hip than HR (ugh). But from the days where we stacked papers neatly into file folders – old school style! – alllll the way up until now, where applications can be tracked online via internal spreadsheets…we’ve come quite a long way together since I started out by sticking labels onto paper stacks back then
I have never worked in a place where everything was already set, and I can tell it’s true for the people at SmartRecruiters too. They are always looking to change things up- even with new technology coming out every day like smartphones that make our lives easier on so many levels!
Which is true, and makes a lot of sense when considering what would have led Sarah to defect from her old job to grow the company at the leading edge of a revolution. Fine, it’s only HR but those who work in or watch this happening are aware that these are momentous times. It ruins one question people might ask about Wilson: how did she get recruited? For someone so good at spotting dud candidates sometimes within seconds – high priestess in dark arts gentle saying no- for someone like that, there must be some kind squirly juju executed
Sarah is the Director of Performance Management at Indigo, and she has been using their product for over five years. When they asked if she would like to be a part of SmartRecruiters as an employee instead of just another satisfied customer, it was hard not to take them up on that offer considering how much Sarah believes in what they are doing there!
Far from becoming the HR head for a digital HR company, Sarah is confident in her decision to not be so much of a Luddite. It may seem like an odd thing to do when there are jobs that require less work and more pay out there with no room left at this particular job opening but as time progresses technology will always find ways around anything. With all these advances happening now it’s hard to believe that we would need someone who has never done any sort of computer related task before taking on such an important position (even if they were fully AI).
