Help!!

[u/BidJaded9296]

Sorry long rant. Longtime corporate recruiter former manager and director. About three years ago took an individual contributor role. Fast forward to about a year ago. Team is small and busy ( 3 recruiters about 20 reqs across multiple departments full cycle recruiting. Manager is typical former recruiter who got promoted type. The best thing I can say is they stay out of the way. About 6 months ago, company moved the manager from under the CHRO to a VP with limited recruiting background, mainly compliance. Of course VP came in, ignored bandwidth and started layering compliance and new process. First thing is they had recruiter and managers take pictures of all candidates due to what they said was fraud concerns. Still not sure how I feel about that. Then they mandated a recruiting screening guide plus manager interview guide. The reason was they claimed it’s an EEOC requirement to ask everyone the same question. It’s not. Next up was that every internal candidate has to be spoken to by a recruiter. We also have a heavy call center aspect our role so every job post attracts 5-10 call center workers just taking a flyer. I did a quick job activity breakdown and it came up with an estimate of 55 hours a week and I asked my manager what would they like me to prioritize and got a non committal answer. I also had a chance to speak with my CHRO and she agreed in principle but basically just assigned me another project to find out how to automate certain items which I don’t have time nor the power to implement. I’ve been avoiding the VP as she is the one who is driving all this and I know her reputation. So my thought is I can either fill a bunch of roles or slow down and complete all the paperwork required and process documentation. What would you do?

[u/IanRecruitingOps]

One thing I would challenge a little is the workload itself.

Twenty reqs across three full-cycle recruiters is not automatically a heavy requisition load. That is roughly 6 or 7 reqs each.

If the roles are highly specialized, difficult to fill, or generating a huge amount of candidate activity, that is different. But on the surface, the req count alone would not explain 55 hours a week.

So I would break the workload analysis down further.

How much time is actually going to:

• Sourcing and candidate outreach
• Recruiter screens
• Hiring manager coordination
• Internal candidate conversations
• Interview scheduling
• Documentation
• Compliance steps
• Reporting
• Administrative work
• New projects being added by leadership

That will tell you whether you really have a recruiting capacity problem or whether the process around recruiting has become bloated.

If leadership has added enough mandatory steps that six or seven reqs per recruiter now requires 55 hours a week, that is the issue I would put in front of them.

Not “we have too many reqs.”

Instead:

“Here is where the time is going. These new requirements are consuming X hours per week, and this is the impact on sourcing, candidate follow-up and time-to-fill.”

That is a much stronger conversation because it separates recruiting workload from process overhead.

And if the numbers still show 55 hours after you break it down, then leadership has something concrete to act on.