Does Your Recruiting Function Belong in Human Resources?

By MedZilla Staff Writer

Marysville, WA - August 22, 2003--A classified ad for a recruiter might look similar to one for a sales professional. As Chuck Pappalardo, managing director of Trilogy Venture Search, a Burlingame, Calif.-based executive search firm, says, recruiting is a hybrid: a mix of sales, strategy, marketing and other elements.

On the other hand, an ad for an HR executive would probably focus more on previous HR experience and very different attributes. Yet, experts disagree on whether the two roles can be successfully executed by one person, or may actually require two very different people.

"It's likely that recruiting and retention will become the main focus of many HR departments. There is a continuing trend that many employers are electing to outsource other HR functions, such as benefits. This is attracting more attention to the organization of HR departments, and whether HR professionals can make the transition into roles centered on recruitment or retention," says Frank Heasley, PhD, president and CEO of MedZilla.com, a leading Internet recruitment and professional community that targets jobseekers and HR professionals in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, healthcare and science.

CEO says it's better when they're treated as one function

James Walker, president and CEO of Octagon Research Solutions, a life sciences solutions provider, in King of Prussia, Penn., says that Octagon went from a startup with less than 10 employees to more than 60 employees in less than four years.

Walker says that Octagon's growth has been dependent on the roles of HR and recruiting being integrated into one position. "It's almost critical to having that person being one and the same because recruiting is the first step and retention is the goal," Walker says. "For us the cost of recruiting is high enough but the cost of turnover is even higher."

He claims that whoever is doing the recruiting also has to be involved in the development and evolution of the corporate culture, which is an HR function. The company has prospered with that line of thinking by recruiting the right mix of people, he says. "We've never lost anyone on the senior management team in four years, and we have less than 6% turnover," Walker says.

Different skills sets, same heading

Peggi Franks, senior legal associate, with Dharmacon, Inc., a biotech firm in Lafayette, Colo., says her to-do list as an HR manager for the company included:

However, when she was asked to recruit, her task list looked different

Recruiting and other Human Resources responsibilities are very different functions, according to Franks.

But the two, she says, should fall under the HR heading, and the HR manager/director should be able to perform recruiting functions. "I believe it takes a special talent to ask the nitty-gritty questions without making the candidate feel like they're being put on the spot and become defensive," according to Franks, "For example, especially in the current job market, a candidate may come in to interview for an [administrative assistant] position in marketing when what they really want is a [junior accountant] position in finance. I've experienced candidates outright lying about what they can do and the commitment they are willing to make to a position."

The ideal, Franks says, is to have a skilled recruiter focus on bringing good, qualified candidates in and letting someone else take care of all the post-hire functions to keep the employee. This concept works for companies hiring enough people to keep an in-house recruiter busy. If not, outsourcing the recruiting function or training an HR staff person to recruit might work, she says. "I have met HR managers/directors who admitted that, although they did recruiting, it was not their favorite thing. That is why I believe it is crucial to have someone perform this function who is stellar at it and a people-person; otherwise, a company will be looking to fill the position again in three months because the wrong candidate was hired for the open position," Franks says.

HR and recruiting may be two separate functions, but that doesn't mean that recruiting isn't an imbedded task inside HR-it means that HR takes on a much more robust presence in the company, from personnel development, to compensation plans to resource allocation, to medical benefit issues and 401(k) policies, etc., says Chuck Pappalardo, managing director, Trilogy Venture Search, executive search, based in Burlingame, Calif.

"In the last several years, the outsource recruiting industry has grown substantially because we focus specifically on [recruiting]," Pappalardo says. "We don't focus on all the other things that HR people do to maintain a company's growth. We go out and find specific individuals that match specific criteria and [we are] highly specialized in what we do. An internal recruiting function would not necessarily have the ability to be as focused."

Pappalardo says that while there are HR people in recruiting, recruiting is not typically an area HR professional's move into. Especially when it comes to conducting executive searches, recruiters need certain skills to be successful. Among those skills is the ability to attract people at high levels, in a professional manner. Recruiters also have to have "global" versus company views, realizing what the possibilities, challenges and trends are in the industry marketplace.

When hiring recruiters, Pappalardo looks for executives in specific industries who have marketing or sales experience.

The recruiting environment, Pappalardo says, is very different than that of general HR. It takes the right personality to operate in the recruiting world, he adds. Recruiting is often dependent on incoming revenue and features sales and execution demands that are very unlike traditional HR roles.

As a former recruiter in science and healthcare, Dr. Heasley adds that these functions work better if differentiated whenever possible, and that coordination is essential for best results. "Employee retention, compensation and benefits, and other classical HR functions require a steady, day to day approach with the ability to focus on detail. From my own experience, successful recruiters tend more toward being entrepreneurs and risk takers with personalities more suited toward sales and marketing. It's nearly impossible to find these two very different sets of qualities in the same individual."

About MedZilla.com
Established in 1994, MedZilla is the original Web site to serve career and hiring needs for professionals and employers in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, medicine, science and healthcare. MedZilla databases contain about 10,000 open positions, 13,000 resumes from candidates actively seeking new positions and 50,000 archived resumes. These resources have been characterized as the largest, most comprehensive databases of their kind on the Web in the industries served.