To most people, recruiting is “a HR thing.” That’s the silo it belongs to. Silos are very prevalent in business. In fact, Machiavelli discussed silos in 1513.
But we also work in a time when collaboration is super important. Teams are scattered all over the country or even the world, and the strategy often involves a “road map,” which means A needs to be finished before B gets started. Groups need to come together to hit goals.
The “knowledge economy” we often reference is really a “collaboration economy.” Collaboration and silos don’t typically go well together.
All this said, what other departments should talent acquisition be working with the most?
1. Marketing
This is the logical one. Marketing typically owns the brand of a given company. While that brand is important in terms of acquiring customers and generating revenue, said brand is also important in how candidates view the company.
Think about Google. Now think about Amazon. When you think about them, you have some idea of what it might be like to work there. That’s often called employer branding, and it’s fairly strategic in terms of the type of talent you can attract.
Marketing and talent acquisition also need to work together on the content and language associated with recruiting. HR departments don’t always have content-focused people within them. Marketing and talent acquisition should be talking every day about how the company is positioned in the talent marketplace.
In short: Are we putting content out there that would make people want to come work with us?
2. Sales
This is a less direct relationship for recruiters, and doesn’t need to be on a daily basis. But sales dictates revenue, and revenue dictates growth and what the company can do in the future.
A problem with the recruiting function at a lot of companies is it’s not connected enough to business goals. The whole discussion of HR getting “a seat at the table” is about them being more closely tied to the business. The business is rooted in sales. That’s what executives care the most about. So talent acquisition professionals need to talk to the sales department and understand:
- How do we sell?
- Who buys?
- What differentiates us?
- What do we say about ourselves in the market?
- What are our quotas/goals?
- What types of people sell this product the best?
3. IT
Every single department of a company in 2018 needs to be interacting with IT. For talent acquisition, this collaboration can include software implementation, data collection and access, and security and privacy issues.
4. Customer success
Talent acquisition has adopted the idea that everything is “customer-first,” which seems to push out any new ideas related to employees. A better approach might be thinking of employees as internal customers. If you view it that way, then TA can interact with customer success departments to learn best practices such as:
- Contextualizing the consumer journey
- Important touchpoints
- Platforms they respond on
- Communication approaches
In this way, customer experience begins to inform the candidate experience.