Strategies to Grow a Skilled Recruiting Team

More than 11.3 million jobs waiting to be filled. That’s the latest figure from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

As a recruitment specialist, I think about the impact of those numbers on leaders and their organizations. I talk with many of them every day, and I see the challenge of connecting those opportunities with the individuals who have the skills and knowledge to do more than fill an empty office, but instead are prepared to begin to contribute on day one.

Because of the work I do, leaders are often surprised when I advise them to look internally to respond more strategically to this competitive labor market. “We did that, but there’s no one with the necessary skills” is a far too common response.

If you’re not investing in building an internal pipeline, in carefully identifying top contributors who should be trained and developed to move into senior roles, you’re missing a critical opportunity to create a competitive advantage for your organization. But it’s much more than simply placing someone on a “management track.” It’s investing in equipping these employees with the skills they’ll need not simply to perform more effectively in their current role, but to equip them for their next role and the roles that follow.

PwC’s Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2022  shows how important upskilling is to increase employee satisfaction and improve retention rates. It’s part of the process of empowering your top contributors with specialized skills and training by investing in your most important asset—your people.

We take this process seriously at my company, Duffy Group, Inc. Our mission is to help our clients maximize their recruitment resources, so of course, that needs to begin with my own team! We engage in several specific strategies to grow our internal recruiting talent, all designed to demonstrate how much we value those contributors and want to help them grow:

Skills development: This is a continuous process, with ongoing training in best practices for interviewing, engaging with candidates, and sourcing different platforms. We’ve used recruitment training modules from Microsoft and AIRS recruitment training from ADP. We also record any off-site training so that all of our team can view it and learn.

Self-development: We equip our talent with knowledge of their own styles of communication and problem-solving using personality assessments like the Enneagram to enable them to collaborate more effectively with others.

Career growth plan: We’ve created a career path for our recruiters, ensuring opportunities for them to build their expertise to move into a Senior Recruiter or Practice Leader role. They can also move into a training or back-office role, with identified pathways to enable team members to hone their skills, set career goals, and then progress in a purposeful way.

Regular check-ins: Duffy Group was an early adopter of remote work, which means that we’ve also recognized the need for opportunities for connection and collaboration. We have monthly virtual meetings for all of our recruiting staff, and ask ongoing questions, such as “Where are your challenges? What’s working—and what isn’t working?” And a very critical question: “How can we help you get better?” We want to find out which forms of development will help our recruiters reach their goals, and then we provide that training, whether internally from one of our leaders, or by hiring an outside expert.

These strategies demonstrate our commitment to our recruiters. I want them to feel valued and to be challenged. I’m investing in my top talent so that they can help other organizations grow their top talent.

 

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