Knowledge is great, if you keep it.

What’s the point if you lay your recruiters off anyway?

If you hire internal recruiters to build an internal knowledge base, but you lay them off in a year anyway: you’ve done the opposite.

I’m referring to the handling of hiring spikes. Recruiters were twice as likely to get laid off than their counterparts in areas like tech this year. And it’s because either:

1. Companies thought last year’s boom would last forever.

or

2. They didn’t care. And convinced themselves full time TA hiring was the absolute solution for any recruitment need.

????Those “hiring is broken” takes you read on Linkedin? They almost always come down to the disconnect between the hiring authority and the recruiter doing the work.

Yes, you do need a strong internal recruiting team (we advocate this). Process, communication, relationships, and the tech to make it work.

Those things take time to establish. Without them, hiring struggles and everyone interviewing with you has a bad experience. You’re contributing to the nightmarish hellscape of job seeking.

So when the hiring needs taper and you rip the excess people out, the knowledge is gone. You’re starting from scratch next time things pick up (assuming it does.)

Or…you can find a partner who can build those relationships. Adopt your process. Master your messaging. And duck in and out when the needs come and go. (Like we’ve done thousands of times.)

And no one gets laid off. If you’re into that sort of thing…

James Hornick

Partner at Hirewell. #3 Ranked Sarcastic Commenter on LinkedIn.