Even today, many people still confuse an HR manager with a recruiter: they think it is the same profession. This is not entirely true. Throw a more recent sourcer role into the mix and you’ll get an idea of what’s going on in people’s heads when they hear all these positions popping up in various contexts. So, let’s find out what these jobs are, what are their differences and what people do in these roles.
WHO IS A RECRUITER?
The main task of the recruiter is to find new employees for the company. Recruiters should have good communication skills, basic knowledge of psychology and negotiation.
Recruiters are heavily engaged in the selection of personnel: they find specialists to solve problems that are relevant to the company now. Their tools are job sites, recommendations, search in social media (Facebook and LinkedIn) or highly specialized closed communities.
RECRUITER’S MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Search for candidates
- Reviewing relevant resumes
- Conducting an initial interview and testing
- Communication with colleagues, clarification of information on vacancies
- Communication with candidates
- Organization of meetings (colleagues from related departments with candidates)
- Overall labor market analysis
Recruiters also share vacancies through relevant channels: job search sites, social media, printed publications, etc.
WHO IS HR MANAGER?
HR managers have a wider range of tasks. The classic HR-generalist deals with all issues related to the company's employees: search for candidates and their training, internal communication, personnel documentation and administration of benefits.
In large companies, there are full-fledged departments working with personnel: either an individual person or a team of professionals responsible for each function.
HR MANAGER’S MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Evaluation and maintenance of employee loyalty
- New employee onboarding control
- Organization of internal events
- Support of communications within the company
- Employee motivation
- Managing bonuses and rewards
- Creation and implementation of training programs, master classes, etc.
- Maintaining labor laws in the company
An HR manager is also responsible for maintaining a friendly and productive atmosphere in the team. HR cares about staff comfort and corporate culture and balances these concepts.
WHO IS A SOURCER?
Sourcers are like secret agents. They work behind the scenes, seeking out all the information about the candidate using various tools such as Google Search, Facebook, LinkedIn, Telegram, GitHub, etc. For them, the main task is to find the right person and his or her direct contacts. Then they pass this information to the recruiter. Sourcers should have an analytical mindset and understand technical algorithms.
SOURCER’S MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Coordination with recruiter to determine job requirements
- Search for candidates
- Transfer of potential candidate's contacts to the recruiter
A sourcer often works in conjunction with a recruiter. Today, companies still have different attitudes towards the position of a sourcer. Somewhere this is a young specialist who is taken just as an assistant to a recruiter, and somewhere this is a seasoned professional, a person who knows where to find the right specialist in a very short time.
It also happens that an employee must perform two functions – both a recruiter and a sourcer. It is quite difficult, because the sourcer role is for an introvert, a technical specialist, and a recruiter is more of an extrovert, capable of selling a vacancy when needed. Combining these two components might be quite a challenge.
WHAT KIND OF EMPLOYEE DOES YOUR COMPANY NEED? OR IS IT BETTER TO OUTSOURCE?
The main metrics for answering these questions are the number of employees in your company and the number of open vacancies. If the task is to quickly increase the staff, for example, to double the number of employees in 3 months, then it makes sense to hire an individual person exclusively for recruitment.
Recruitment of top management or senior technical positions can be handled by the head of the department or the founder. Many founders are public people, well-known in the market, with a broad list of contacts, allowing them to attract candidates through personal channels. But it is the recruiter who should catch up further communication with the responding candidates, as his time is cheaper than the time of the business owner.
IN A NUTSHELL
Many companies are now on the path of outsourcing their recruitment tasks; they prefer to transfer it to external providers or recruitment agencies. Latter can be universal or specialized in specific fields (for example, IT or healthcare).
The well-known dispute on what is better – an internal recruiter or an agency – does not have a single correct answer. An in-house recruiter knows the culture and structure of the company and works closely with hiring managers.
A recruiter from an agency, as a rule, has a little more tools and resources. Often, companies turn to recruitment agencies to find a unique specialist, conduct a confidential search, hire an entire team in a short period of time or on foreign markets.
