Why Building a Strong Recruiting Team Is So Hard (and How to Succeed Anyway)

Your recruiting team is the backbone of your organization. Unless you have the right talent to drive innovation and success, wider company initiatives can’t succeed.

Building a recruiting team that can help you find the right talent is no easy task. The biggest problem that talent acquisition leaders run into when building their recruiting teams is that company leadership isn’t involved in recruiting plans.

Recruiting isn’t always top of mind for leadership – but it should be if you intend to hire strategically in the recruiting boom that’s coming in 2016.

But that isn’t the only obstacle standing in the way of building a great recruiting team. There are many reasons why organizations struggle to assemble strong recruiting departments. Here are three challenges that many talent acquisition leaders face, as well as some advice on overcoming these challenges when you run up against them:

1. Real Industry Experts Are Hard to Find

The best recruiters are the ones who have experience recruiting for the industry in which your organization operates. Your ideal recruiter will not only have a deep understanding of the industry, but they will also know where to find the kinds of candidates you need.

Solution: Look for recruiters who have their fingers on the pulse of your industry.

You can’t be an industry expert in anything unless you’re keeping up with the latest news, trends, and developments. A recruiter who is in the know will know when the time is right to hire, which candidates can be persuaded to leave their current jobs to join your company, and when a job should be sent to search.

2. Engaging Passive Candidates Is an Art, Not a Science

To succeed in today’s climate, your organization needs to recruit talent from the competition – but that’s a task that most recruiters are not up for. When it comes to building the right recruiting team, you need recruiters who aren’t afraid to approach the best candidates – even if those candidates are already employed.

Engaging passive candidates and convincing them to come to your organization requires a big-picture view and a dedication to collaboration between colleagues throughout the entire organization.

Solution: Build a team of recruiters who are so passionate about your organization that they don’t need to do any convincing.

A recruiter’s passion for the company’s mission needs to be infectious – that’s how you can lure top talent away from their current jobs. If your recruiters are passionate about your organization’s bottom line, it means two things: You’ve found recruiters who are genuinely interested in your industry and your organization’s success, and you’ve done a good job of passing along your organization’s messaging through a strong employer brand. Both are important when it comes to building a quality recruiting team.

3. Insight Isn’t Easy

Not every recruiter will have the insights you need to hire the perfect candidates for your organization. This is important no matter where on the value scale an open position falls: In order to make good hires, recruiters need that “sixth sense” that allows them to determine who the perfect candidate is.

Solution: Look for someone who spends more time evaluating and less time selling.

Selling an organization is a big part of recruiting, especially when it comes to projecting a strong employer brand that will attract top talent. A recruiter that knows how to sell your employer brand to top talent is a valuable resource – but not as valuable as a recruiter who also knows how to evaluate talent properly to determine whether or not they’re right for the company.

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When building your recruiting team, think about your budget and hire the recruiters who will make the right decisions for your organization. The candidates they source will impact your business directly.

A version of this article originally appeared on the BountyJobs blog.