Recruiting and Employer Branding

SystemicHR as usual raises some really insightful points:

While I’ve written often about the EVP, or what I call the employer brand, it is basically what attracts an employee to the employer. So I’d twist the question from “who is the relationship with, EVP or recruiter?” to “is the recruiter a tool of the EVP, or vice versa?” Clearly, I think that the recruiter’s network should be levered ² to bring job seekers to the employer’s EVP. However, this also suggests that the EVP is the highest power, reinforcing the role of recruiter as conduit – although necessary conduit.

Employer Branding is a little understood concept and while it sounds very marketing oriented, the creation of the employer branding is less about HR or Marketing at all.

The core of the employment brand promise is the organizational culture, and that is a direct function of the personality of the entrepreneur than is usually given credit for. Of course, after the passage of the entrepreneur the culture is either moulded in the same manner or completely changed.

So what does have to do with recruiting? A lot, actually. While a recruiter's value is in the ability to reach out to a large pool of potential candidates, it is value-adding when the recruiter is able to take a decision on whether candidate A is more suited to the employer's culture than candidate Z. While this might still be easier when A and Z have same demonstrated functional skills, the tough job is to actually point out why one is better than the other to the hiring manager, when Z apparently has worked with larger companies and has more exposure than A.

This is when a recruiter, either internal or external, actually becomes a recruitment consultant.

And to actually become a flawless consultant of any type you just have to follow Peter Block's ideas:

• know my area of expertise (a given),
• behave authentically with the client,
• tend to and complete the business of each consulting phase
• act to build capacity for the client to solve the next problem on their own

Every professional service can be transformed into a consulting relationship by following Block's advice. Whether it is a chef's service or an accountant's.

What are you doing to become a consultant?