Could you write a little about the successes, positive impact, and theory of change of the recruitment industry? My personal and professional experience has not given me a positive perspective on the role of recruiters or their success in finding the right candidates. The success rate of recruited candidates doesn’t seem to be (in my anecdotal experience) any greater than those who are vetted by the org or company in a normal process. Have I just been unlucky?
Hi Charlie. Great question. I don’t have any data at hand on the recruitment industry as a whole compared to in-house recruiting. I know that the demand and market for recruitment services are growing as it gets harder and harder for companies to fill their positions. There are economic calculations comparing the total costs of in-house recruitment vs. hiring an external service, of course assuming that external services are doing a better job (as in successful and efficient). I do believe that there are plenty of services that only do an okay job and might not be better than in-house recruitment. But sometimes these services just get hired because the in-house recruiters don’t have the capacity to manage all recruiting processes themselves.
This being said, my article wasn’t about promoting the recruitment industry as a whole. I think what makes recruitment impactful is if you are hiring for an impactful project or organization. So I was referring to in-house recruiters of EA (or EA-aligned) organizations and recruiters for EA (or EA-aligned)hiring agencies.
I hope this was helpful and thanks for sharing your experience :-)
Thanks for the reply, that is helpful! Hiring is definitely difficult and getting it right has absurdly good benefits! Tangential to this, I think Open Phil has recently been putting a lot of effort into having a good recruitment team. Might be worth getting in touch with them!
yes, I am very pleased to see that there are more and more initiatives in the EA space to build up professional recruitment for the EA community. And this is why we need more recruiters ;-)
Could you write a little about the successes, positive impact, and theory of change of the recruitment industry? My personal and professional experience has not given me a positive perspective on the role of recruiters or their success in finding the right candidates. The success rate of recruited candidates doesn’t seem to be (in my anecdotal experience) any greater than those who are vetted by the org or company in a normal process. Have I just been unlucky?
Hi Charlie. Great question. I don’t have any data at hand on the recruitment industry as a whole compared to in-house recruiting. I know that the demand and market for recruitment services are growing as it gets harder and harder for companies to fill their positions. There are economic calculations comparing the total costs of in-house recruitment vs. hiring an external service, of course assuming that external services are doing a better job (as in successful and efficient). I do believe that there are plenty of services that only do an okay job and might not be better than in-house recruitment. But sometimes these services just get hired because the in-house recruiters don’t have the capacity to manage all recruiting processes themselves.
This being said, my article wasn’t about promoting the recruitment industry as a whole. I think what makes recruitment impactful is if you are hiring for an impactful project or organization. So I was referring to in-house recruiters of EA (or EA-aligned) organizations and recruiters for EA (or EA-aligned) hiring agencies.
I hope this was helpful and thanks for sharing your experience :-)
Hi Pia,
Thanks for the reply, that is helpful! Hiring is definitely difficult and getting it right has absurdly good benefits! Tangential to this, I think Open Phil has recently been putting a lot of effort into having a good recruitment team. Might be worth getting in touch with them!
Hi Charlie,
yes, I am very pleased to see that there are more and more initiatives in the EA space to build up professional recruitment for the EA community. And this is why we need more recruiters ;-)