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Corporate agency recruiters the world over are obsessed by numbers. Some aren’t, but the majority are. They have had 78 CVs submitted. They will have a two-minute conversation (no longer) with 16 of them. They will submit 7 for first interviews, and if they are lucky, they might make a placement and earn some commission. Play the percentages game, and you will come out on top. Job done. Move on.

Company recruiters are becoming victim to the very same game. Their management demand the same metrics and they, in turn, work with metrics-obsessed recruiters who can deliver the numbers. Some of the company recruiters have actually come from the agency side in a previous life – they don’t know any other way.

The costs of botched recruitment are sky high (please see my related article). The misuse of ever more sophisticated technology, coupled with these short-sighted “bums on seats” hiring practices, is swiftly turning the recruitment industry into the laughing stock of the corporate world.

There is another way. There has to be.

I am often horrified by stories from my senior candidates.

Many of them simply do not reply to the cold and impersonal email tactics anymore. Some of these emails even start “Dear Sir / Madam”….. They state that they have a “great role” for candidates before even asking what the executives are looking for. They ask a candidate to share their CV without telling them anything about the role (it’s confidential) and with a cheery assurance that they are a great fit for it. The candidate chat is often so rehearsed that recruiters get flustered when they are forced “off script.”

Executives who are going to be driving the growth of industry deserve more than this. They are speaking with their feet. The numbers of boutique and industry specific headhunters have mushroomed over the past decade. Their march continues unabated because they care.

Global corporate “giants” are staffed by 25-year-olds who have been in recruitment for 20 minutes. The smaller operations are run by industry experts who have been caring for candidates for 20 years.

The global corporate giants are obsessed by metrics, profit and number crunching. They tell their unwitting novices to bash the phones until a client says “you’re hired.” The smaller guys partner with an executive on a one-to-one basis until a client says “you’re hired.” That executive then becomes their client.

The recruitment industry needs to start caring about long term benefits of a quality hiring process. Their maxim should be to find “the” candidate rather than “a” candidate. Clients should open their eyes to the consequences of mediocre hiring practices. If recruiters focus on metrics alone, the revolving door will swing ever faster.

Candidates aren’t pieces of meat – they are complex pieces of an ever-changing jigsaw.

It takes time, patience and dedication to find the perfect fit.

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N.B. I am an Executive Recruiter and hence this article is about senior candidates. This is not to say that candidate care shouldn’t improve at all levels of the recruitment spectrum. It simply must.

Over a career spanning 20 years, Greg Tanna has established himself as an executive recruitment leader in the APAC Customer Contact industry.