Why great recruiters speak the language of outcomes!
Welcome to the second edition of the Partnering Recruiter
In the first edition of The Partnering Recruiter, we explored why recruiters need to understand the businesses they recruit for. That first edition was deliberately a little conceptual because it needed to be.
Before we can talk about stakeholder influence, executive communication or business partnering, we first need to understand the organisation itself.
How it makes money? How it creates value? (do you know the difference between making money and value?) What are the strategic priorities?
This edition takes the next step because understanding the business is one thing but understanding how different functions contribute to that business is where things start becoming much more practical and valuable for you.
Human behaviour dictates we gravitate towards what we feel comfortable with. I’ve been managing recruiters for 15 years and it happens a lot where recruiters become very comfortable speaking the language of candidates but are far less comfortable speaking the language of leaders.
It’s not because recruiters aren't capable of it, it's a simple and very human explanation.
Candidates generally feel safer.
When you're talking to a candidate, you're usually discussing careers, motivations, skills and opportunities. If the conversation doesn't go perfectly, the consequences are relatively limited.
Stakeholders are different.
When you're sitting with a Head of Engineering, Sales Director or ExCo member, you're talking to somebody who can directly influence how you're perceived inside the organisation. The stakes feel higher and when the stakes feel higher, people naturally retreat into territory where they feel more confident. For recruiters, that's often process, vacancy updates, pipeline reports, interview feedback or recruitment metrics.
All useful but not generally the things leaders care about. Leaders care about outcomes.
Taking Software Engineering as an example. If you're recruiting engineers, you'll probably spend time understanding:
programming languages
cloud platforms
architecture
development methodologies
technical capability
And that's important. Without that knowledge you can’t assess talent or build credibility with candidates. But the Head of Engineering isn't spending their day thinking about Java or Kubernetes. They're thinking about:
product delivery
engineering productivity
technical debt
customer experience
roadmap execution
Outcomes.
The same thing happens in Sales. Recruiters become comfortable talking about:
SDRs
Account Executives
pipeline generation
territory planning
Sales leaders are thinking about:
revenue attainment
conversion rates
sales productivity
market growth
Again, outcomes.
And this is where recruiters need to make a shift. Don’t think only about jobs. Start thinking about why those jobs exist. Every role exists to help a department achieve an outcome. Every department exists to help the business achieve an outcome. The recruiters who understand that chain become significantly more valuable.
You might be thinking: "Why does any of this matter?" After all, recruiters have built successful careers for years operating primarily at a process and delivery level. Historically, being good at sourcing, process management, candidate engagement and delivery execution could create a very successful recruitment career.
What you need to ask yourself isn’t whether that was true, it is whether that will continue to be true. Technology is already reshaping many of the activities recruiters have traditionally spent most of their time doing.
Sourcing platforms are becoming increasingly intelligent (go and look at metaview.ai and their sourcing platform - i'm not sponsored it's just a good tool), CV screening and matching technology continues to improve. Scheduling is increasingly automated. Even elements of initial interviewing and information gathering are becoming technology-enabled if you want to go that far.
None of this means your job is disappearing but it is going to change and it does raise an important question.
If technology continues to get better at recruitment activities, how do you continue to create value?
The answer increasingly lies in judgement, influence, commercial understanding, stakeholder engagement, relationship building and credibility. A recruiter who simply manages process will increasingly find themselves competing with technology. The recruiter who helps leaders make better decisions becomes significantly harder to replace.
A few years ago, I was supporting the hiring of a Chief of Staff role for an exco member. During the process, a senior leader from a direct competitor applied and on paper, it looked incredibly attractive.
They had sector experience, domain expertise, recognised brands on their CV and significant leadership experience. Our exco member was understandably excited and their thinking was straightforward:
"Imagine bringing all of that experience into the organisation."
The issue wasn’t whether they would bring some great experience to the team and the organisation. The issue was that the role had been created to provide a very specific outcome. The reality our exec was stretched, too many initiatives, too many priorities, too many stakeholders. They didn’t need sector and domain expertise as that existed in the team in buckets. They needed someone who could create the bandwidth they needed to execute more effectively.
We had to reframe the discussion around outcomes rather than backgrounds and in doing so the conversation changed completely.
The strongest candidate was no longer the person with the most impressive industry experience. It was the person best positioned to deliver what the role actually existed to achieve.
The learning here is that recruitment delivery focuses on who fits the brief. Business partnership challenges whether the brief is solving the right problem in the first place and that's a very different conversation. It's a conversation that only happens when you've built enough understanding and credibility to ask it.
Next time you're speaking to a senior leader, think about what's important to them but also something I feel it’s important for recruiters to understand is:
Hiring managers don't care about your metrics.
They care about the outcomes your metrics enable.
A hiring manager doesn't care that the time-to-hire is reduced by ten days - they care that the team was fully staffed earlier.
They care that a product is launched on time.
They care that customer demand was met.
They care that revenue targets were achieved.
A stakeholder doesn't care that candidate experience increased by fifteen points - they care that higher quality candidates accepted offers, joined the organisation engaged and stayed longer.
The metric matters to you but it's the outcome that creates value.
Strong recruiters learn how to translate recruitment activity into business impact. That is one of the key differences between being a delivery recruiter and a business partner.
So what can you do with this? I'd encourage you to complete a simple exercise.
Pick one department that you support regularly.
Then answer five questions:
How does this department create value?
What metrics matter most to its leaders?
What challenges keep those leaders awake at night?
What capability gaps exist today?
What does exceptional performance look like?
If you can't confidently answer those questions, you've probably found your next development opportunity.
For TA Leaders and Managers, there's a practical takeaway too.
Invite leaders from different functions into your team meetings.
But don't ask them to talk about recruitment.
Ask them to explain:
how the department creates value
how success is measured
what challenges they're facing
what good performance looks like
where talent has the biggest impact
The objective isn't to turn recruiters into engineers, salespeople or finance professionals but to help recruiters understand enough to ask better questions, challenge constructively and connect hiring activity to business outcomes.
Confidence comes from understanding, understanding creates credibility and credibility creates influence. Influence is what allows recruiters to move beyond process and into genuine business partnership.
In the next edition we'll explore stakeholder influence itself.
Because understanding the business and understanding the function is only half of the equation.
You still need to influence people.
And that's where things start getting really fun!
P.S. If you try the five-question exercise, I'd genuinely love to hear what you discover. The gaps you uncover are often far more valuable than the answers you already know.
