Technology in people’s business: the INRALS view

January 24, 2017

Many recent publications discuss ‘big data’, the power of online recruitment, and advocate the internal organization of recruitment departments. The idea behind this is that, with the current technology, it can easily be internally managed by oneself and can save a lot of money. Recently, PeopleTicker presented its whitepaper ‘2016 in review: the contingent labor market’, in which these developments are covered. INRALS, the biggest and strongest global network of recruitment agencies in the life sciences, would like to share its view on these trends with its business relations.

A logical idea. It is clearly the case that the above-mentioned developments result in faster contact with potential candidates than before. However, INRALS strongly believes that outsourcing of recruitment is better externally than internally managed.

INRALS is characterized by a qualitative human-to-human approach to candidates for their life sciences clients. Throughout the world we see the trend mentioned in the whitepaper to use social media and other software. We highly endorse this and make frequent use of this ourselves as well. After all, quickly finding the right professionals becomes much more efficient. In practice there are many risks: worldwide, the power of the internal recruiter in companies could decrease, the progress could stagnate and selecting the right candidate may become a lot more complicated.

The internal recruitment department (the stronger ones aside) tends to be less informed about the basic activities and needs of the business department for which they are working.
Often such departments are run by young, talented and ambitious professionals who are judged more on quantity than quality. INRALS members speak with their clients, often have known the departments for years and know what is needed, involve the team, for the short, medium and long term. This ensures a better informed starting point of the recruitment process, in which the chances of a rapid and successful procedure are many times greater.
Also INRALS members are better at maintaining their network, since it is their business capital. With recruitment departments there is a large turnover and organizations repeatedly lose the contacts with professionals gained by departing and promoted recruiters.

Also, INRALS members stay close to the process. The ideal candidate should be interviewed by the client quickly, should be ‘kept warm’ and motivated to continue in the selection process. The ‘internal power’ to sustain this process is often not strong enough. Partly because it concerns young recruiters who don’t dare to push through and partly because the management often has limited confidence in the internal recruitment department. An external agency that actively monitors this progress and where necessary facilitates the process increases the success rate once again.

The selection of professionals can be considered an art, in which a delicate balance of experience (both in life and in selection), education and professionalism are eminent elements. The use of academic knowledge, the right interview skills and even knowing what you cannot know are others. INRALS members interview their candidates before they go to meet to the client. Executives of companies are only put in contact with relevant candidates. The power of this human-to-human activity is enormous and an important reason to get involved with a specialized agency. After all, it’s not fair to expect a young business recruiter to evaluate the competencies, traits and talents of a new manager, simply because he / she does not have this experience yet.

To summarize, INRALS members embrace the new technologies and social media to connect with candidates for their vacancies. They are because of (a) their constant attention to their network, (b) their external power, (c) better intakes, (d) stronger interviews and (e) more experience than (the average) internal recruiters a logical choice to fill key positions.

PeopleTicker’s whitepaper: ‘2016 in review: the contingent labor market’

www.inrals.com