108: More than a hire: Redundancy, resilience & rebuilding confidence with Shanika-Marie John

I guess like what do you think is um what do you what do people misunderstand about talent acquisition Good question.

I think that people...

So there's a difference between talent acquisition and recruitment.

Recruitment sits within talent acquisition.

So that's us being operational.

And I think that what is very misunderstood by the market is that everything is not our fault.

As a recruiter, if you're an in-house recruiter...

You know, you have the parameters of the budget, the parameters of abandoning to work towards, but we also get blindsided.

I think a lot of the times candidates think that we sit there knowing all the information and there are no surprises for us, but no. you know we've worked hard on say three candidates and at the last minute an internal candidate comes back from holiday and they get the job and we get blamed for it because we've it looks like we've mismanaged the process or we haven't been as attentive with our business stakeholders to relay the right information um so i think the biggest misconception there is that you know we are responsible for everything i don't i don't have anything to do with for example approval processes And, you know, when it comes to the offer, I can push the hiring manager in the direction that I think they should go in, i.e., you know, offering a fair salary based on experience, all the things that an employer should do.

But ultimately, the hiring manager has that decision.

So sometimes as recruiters, as frustrated as a candidate is, we are also the same.

Yeah, no, I agree.

And I think that's a really, a really good way of pushing it.

And I know you've We basically get all our guests to fill in a form before they come on to the podcast, just to give us an opportunity to learn a bit more about yourself.

And I always like to ask people what would they like to call their episode? And I think you mentioned you'd like to call it more than a hire.

So what does that phrase mean to you? To me, it means that we as in-house recruiters, and by the way, I'm differentiating between in-house and agency because the agency experience is similar but quite different, right? So I think for me, more than a hire means we do so much more than just filling jobs.

Sometimes we are the reason why a hiring manager... rethink their entire recruitment strategy when they want to take our advice.

Other times, we are the people who are recommending internals and managing the process properly in organisations where perhaps their internal mobility might not be as strong and robust as other companies.

And I think the more than a hire part for me is just a reflection of the fact that we don't just fill jobs in-house.

We do so much more.

Yeah.

And I think it's really interesting to have that because, yeah, I guess I've never really understood what talent acquisition.

I've always just assumed they're the same as a recruiter.

So it's good to understand that.

And from your opinion, what responsibility does talent acquisition have towards candidates?