Recruiters:  There Are Only 3 Kinds of Jobs

If you’re a recruiter, there are only 3 kinds of jobs.

There is no such thing as a nursing job, an engineering req, a finance open position, a marketing job, or cashier assignment to fill. We use words like req, position, job, and assignment to mean essentially the same thing, but then we give a job a “title” and suddenly we think they are all unique. I’m here to tell you that the title doesn’t matter, because there are only 3 jobs that a recruiter will ever face.

First, a quick story. About a year ago while working for a company called Find.ly I was going through my usual discussion about how talent communities help capture people that your applicant tracking system otherwise would not. By the end of the meeting, the customer was convinced of the value proposition, but had one final question: “Does this work for nurses?”

I was completely caught off guard. I was trying to put myself in her shoes, but I couldn’t quite understand the thinking that prompted that question. What I think she meant was: “do nurses use social media?” which wasn’t at all what I was trying to explain.

A few weeks later it happened again, and this time my brain started searching for other reasons that might prompt that question. I suddenly realized what was causing it – she didn’t see any nursing or healthcare data in our demo database. Not one job title or description or candidate profile. We showed her software developers, store managers, baristas, and technicians. She needed to see nurses.

However, as I thought through this a bit more in non-work environments, it hit me. There is no such thing as a nursing job. There is no such thing as a nurse-friendly recruiting technology. Here is why I came to that conclusion – because there are only 3 types of jobs in recruiting.

FIRST JOB
The first job in recruiting is what we call “vanilla.” Some people apply, a handful might get referred, and you generally have a pool of applicants without having to hunt. The source is irrelevant in this conversation. This req has a blend of qualified and unqualified people. The funnel is adequately full and your run your typical process to make a hire.

SECOND JOB
The second job is what we call “the chameleon.” At first, it looks like Job #1, having adequate, or even many applicants. One recruiting leader recently said it best: “This is my Sr. Manager / Director job, where every analyst or Jr. manager out there that wants a promotion applies.” There may have been just one good egg in the bunch, but with so many applicants, he/she fell through the cracks. This job then turns into job type #3.

THIRD JOB
The 3rd job is the one we like to call “the killer.” This really takes resources to execute well. This is the req for which there are no applicants, or for which the small handful of applicants that did apply are easily discarded as “without a doubt unqualified.” This leaves you with the task of doing what my old boss called, “The hardest part of recruiting – finding them.”

Knowing your mix of jobs is critical to helping you determine your best labor model as well as the best process and technology stack to support your model to fill these jobs. One recruiting leader last week said, “I think corporate recruiting is out hunting for solutions to their edge case jobs, and looking for innovation for the handful of jobs that cause them pain over and over. In doing this, I think many of us have taken our eye of the fact that the current solutions are sub-par for even the 80% “normal” jobs that we manage day in and day out.

In my next post, I will discuss the different recruiting conversations you can have to fill all 3 job types.