Recruiters: Can you demonstrate the value you create?

Source: Shortlist

Internal recruiters should look for ways to demonstrate the value they bring to their company, otherwise they risk being viewed as just another “overhead”, says Deloitte New Zealand talent acquisition manager Paul Smith. Speaking at last week’s NZ Sourcing Summit in Auckland, Smith said that when he reported to his bosses at Deloitte, the conversation was focused on value and competitive advantage.

“For the whole of our HR and talent team – we’re seen as an overhead. We don’t generate revenue for the business, so we have to generate something else and that something else is value.” Smith said Deloitte NZ hired 130 to 140 grads each year, and each one could deliver about $NZ200k in revenue in their first year.

“So that’s about $NZ30 million in revenue in the first year, and every grad will stay with us for three or four years to get qualified.”

He said these kind of metrics helped recruiters when they were speaking with senior management.

“If we start talking their language, and not just dropping in financial words but actually talking about creating ‘sustainable, competitive advantage’ in the graduate recruitment space – those three words mean a lot in business.”

Including grads, Deloitte NZ hired about 250 people a year, Smith said.

It had been using social media recruitment for the past four years, he said, and this year the goal was to streamline the campaign and tell a cohesive story about what it was like to work at Deloitte.

It had created new graduate recruitment videos that were now being promoted more intensively, “through Facebook, spliced by age, university and so forth – just to really target the candidates we want”.

Australian copying the sincerest form of flattery
Smith said the Deloitte NZ recruitment team knew they were on the right track when they started seeing similar social media recruitment initiatives from the firm’s domestic competitors, and its Australian colleagues.

“The Australian Deloitte firm was the best piece of copying that could happen – usually we steal things from them but this time they stole it from us. They didn’t even change the name [of the campaign], they just called it ‘Your Future at Deloitte (Australia).'”