Recruiting is Important Even When You Are Not Hiring

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

I ran across a survey in HR Executive recently talking about employee retention replacing talent acquisition as top HR activity for 2023. It’s a good read to check out when you have a moment. Today, I wanted to add a little something to the conversation. 

I totally understand that some organizations are being very conservative with their hiring plans right now. The thing we want to keep in mind is that even when organizations aren’t hiring per se, recruiting is still an important activity. To me, recruiting has never been one of those HR activities that becomes more important the more you do it. In fact, recruiting is always important because it drives so many other things in the company.   

For instance, hiring qualified people has an impact on the training the organization does. It can also have an impact on employee engagement. And of course, it has an impact on performance. Hiring the right managers has an impact on training and development both for the manager and their teams. It also has an impact on employee retention. Oh, and yea…it has an impact on performance. 

So, while recruiting might not be the activity that consumes the majority of your time, that doesn’t mean it’s less important. Which brings me to another aspect of recruiting that companies need to consider. 

When I think of the definition of recruiting, I think of it as the activity that brings the right people to the right jobs within the right time frame while using the organization’s resources wisely. To me, recruiting isn’t a “get a requisition, fill a requisition” function. Recruiting should be involved helping the company create and organize jobs for maximum effectiveness. 

The reason I’m mentioning this is because I recently saw a CNBC workforce survey that said 57% of respondents felt their company is overstaffed. My first question was is the recruiting function helping these organizations with an overstaffing situation? The recruiting function should be in the room with the company’s workforce plan talking about the knowledge, skills, and abilities they have and the ones they will need in the short- and long- term. The last thing a company wants to do is eliminate a position today that they will need in six months or a year. That’s the value recruiting brings to the conversation. 

Every organization must examine their staffing levels to determine if they need to add or not add employees. They also need to evaluate whether reskilling or upskilling would preserve headcount and be beneficial to the operation. Any time an organization hires someone, employee retention is a priority. All these conversations are related to recruiting. 

As we start 2023, this is a good time to evaluate how the recruiting function is being utilized. Is the organization making the most of their expertise? At some point, the company is going to start a full-blown hiring effort and you want them to be ready. Because we all know that if you’re behind when the talent wars start, it will be very difficult if not impossible to catch up.

Image capture by Sharlyn Lauby while exploring London, England

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