First the re-wind. For most of recorded history recruiters have played an active role in pushing aggressive ventures forward. Not always known for ethical behavior, some of the first documented instances were military recruiters conscripting soldiers for far away wars by means of free ale and a drunken stupor induced signature.

Fast-forward to the 20th Century, and we’ll see that during times of rapid market expansion traditional advertising methods failed to assemble an ample workforce to keep up with growth. External recruiting agencies developed to fill the gap during these spikes.

Recruiting agencies quickly became the go-to source when the internal personnel department (HR) was overwhelmed. Not surprisingly, in parallel, temp agencies emerged as the need for rapid response to increasing short term needs.

All that sounds great, so again, where did we go wrong?

In the late 20th – early 21st Century, global competition, the accelerating pace of business, increased availability of venture funding and intensifying of specialization demanded new capabilities. The advent of internet job boards like Dice, Career Mosaic and Monster promised to solve corporate recruiting woes. They delivered cheap job ad posting and immediate access to active candidate resumes; everything was now right in the world.

The new format for online job ad-sales no longer limited size and space, like older print options, so job descriptions slowly became ever expanding laundry lists of skills and experience. In response resumes grew to accommodate overblown job descriptions. As job requirement inflation continued, a tight focus on the actual job to be done often became convoluted. Worse, recruiters became detached from actual recruiting skills as their work-load and dependence on search algorithms grew. In parallel, corporate HR departments mistakenly got the impression that this new technology made it possible for a single recruiter to effectively recruit for 20-30 or more jobs concurrently, instead of a small handful. The combination and cumulative effect of these incremental changes has stealthily become lethal. Published statistics state that in well run companies 1 of every 3 hires is a mis-hire and in many companies that number is 1 of 2. Isn’t that kind of like flipping a coin?

To be fair, technology can’t be blamed for ineffective recruiting practices, but it has at times both enabled it and accentuated it. For example, in the search for ease and speed, without recognizing it, dependence on job boards has rendered many companies unaware that they are spending nearly all of their corporate recruiting budgets on sources that can at best deliver the 15-17% of the candidate pool that is “ACTIVELY” looking for new employment.

Enter “LINKEDIN” our savior! Easy access to the world of “PASSIVE” candidates. Yes, for those prepared to use it, it was helpful for a time. But, like many great things, the value was short lived. In an effort to convert their social media investment into a cash-cow Linkedin decided to convince the corporate world that they owned the gateway to PASSIVE candidates and turned their asset into a premium job board. Give untrained, unskilled recruiters direct unrestricted access to passive professionals and the results were predictably abysmal. The Linkedin inmail channel became so clogged with non-sense recruiting messaging that it’s no longer anything but white noise.

No big deal, right, we still have external recruiting agencies to save the day when we’re in a bind. For the sake of brevity, let me just say sorry, No!

In corporate desperation, creative HR departments decided that the solution to the problem was to hire agency recruiters away from their agency and bring them in-house. This afforded two attractive advantages. First, it reduced sizable agency fees and second, they acquired recruiters already skilled in direct-sourcing candidates.

Brilliant thinking, and it worked for a very short time. Unfortunately, internal recruiting department leadership that didn’t understand direct sourcing quickly loaded the new direct sourcing recruiters with so many req’s they were rendered impotent. The result? The new recruiters quickly unlearned direct-sourcing techniques due to atrophy. Now burdened with 2, 3, 4, 5x the work-load that any one recruiter could effectively manage most became resume traffic cops and ceased to perform actual recruiting.

The result for corporations? They pay large contingency fees to agencies that who submit mostly active candidates without adequate screening. Why don’t corporations just demand better service from agencies? Great question, but the answer is difficult to stomach. Corporations have ceased to demand value from agencies, because they are MOSTLY to blame for the demise of the recruiting agency. Corporate HR departments, and individual managers, thinking they could get results, faster, got in the habit of continually pitting agencies against each other. Unfortunately, what they actually created was a debilitating mad dash to submit candidates as-fast-as-possible, often even without an interview.

As time went on, many, if not most agencies changed their business model, and sourcing model to give corporations what they asked for, lots of resumes fast. The result, a downward spiral in agency recruiting quality. When corporations continued to prioritize speed over quality, agencies delivered. Now as we recognize that this was an effort in futility, we’ve found ourselves saddled with the next generation of recruiters which were never taught to recruit, just post ads and submit resumes.

Want to know how to fix it? Check out the next post entitled. How to fix the broken agency problem, and tune your recruiting process for high performance in the process.