Human Resources vs. Recruiting: What’s the Difference?

Recruiter is an important job in IT since the company’s results directly depend on the timely found specialists. 

Let’s find out what are the differences between recruiters and HR specialists, what their responsibilities are, and what do they get inspiration from.

Who is a recruiter?

The recruiter is the one who directly influences the business’s success. The main goal of any recruiter is timely finding talented candidates for the open positions, considering the business needs and the corporate culture. 

What are the recruiter’s responsibilities? It’s widely spread that a recruiter’s job starts when a position is opened and ends when the job offer is signed by the candidate.
These stages may include the following: 

• ✔️selecting a position depending on the inner customer needs;
• ✔️creating the candidate’s profile;
• ✔️publishing the job opening on all relevant resources;
• ✔️analyzing the resumes and portfolios;
• ✔️searching candidates on their own/headhunting;
• ✔️preparing and holding the interviews;
• ✔️representing the working environment and conditions to the candidate;
• ✔️collecting and reviewing recommendations;
• ✔️composing the job offer;
• ✔️communicating with and supporting the candidates until their very first working day at the company. 

In medium and large-sized companies, further work with the new specialist is performed by the HR specialists. In some companies, recruiters are also responsible for the team and processes introduction phase. 

What is the recruiter’s role in IT?

A recruiter is the first person from the company a candidate gets acquainted with. The first impression is crucial and may influence the recruitment process’s result. It can be stated that recruiters are the employer brand’s ambassadors, and that’s why recruitment specialists must correspond with the company’s values and mission. 

To make a good impression of the company on the candidates, recruiters must always keep up the communication standards high, no matter what level specialist they communicate with, and whether the candidate joins the team or not. Even if your cooperation won’t be possible, the candidate can still recommend the company to their friends, colleagues, among whom there might be the specialist that the company looks for. Recommendations from applicants who passed the interview at the company are very valuable both on the Internet and through word of mouth. 

One of the latest trends is that not only should the candidates give their recommendations while applying for a new position, but also the companies should show the recommendations from their employees. This has become important for highly competitive labor markets like the IT market is. 

“In our dynamic labor market, a specialist may receive 10-15 offers a day only via LinkedIn. A strong employer brand is the best helper for the recruiters. That is why it’s important to process the recommendations and community. Not just us choose the candidates, now candidates are the ones who choose employers”. 

Natalie Urusova, HRD Clovertech

What is the difference between HR specialists and recruiters?

Despite the fact that there is a lot of information about differences between HR and recruitment on the Internet, these are still difficult to distinguish. 

In medium-sized companies, HR specialists deal with everything related to staff, from hiring, HR management, in-team adaptation, and also personnel development. 

In large companies, the roles are divided, and the responsibility of finding specialists falls upon a separate position, called the recruiter. 

Who is an HR specialist?

Human resources (HR) is a specialist who is responsible for the proper team functioning. HR specialist works with the adaptation and motivation of the employees, with evaluation, holding, helps resolve in-team conflicts, cultivate the corporate culture with the managers, gets the values across, maintain development and acknowledgment of the specialists. 

HR and employee cooperation starts from the very first business day of the employee and continues throughout their tenure at the company. 

Among other things, the HR specialization involves the following duties:

• ✔️maintaining the strong corporate culture;
• ✔️giving feedback at all stages;
• ✔️fair compensations and working conditions;
• ✔️raising the efficiency of every team member;
• ✔️loyalty and involvement the employees to the main goal;
• ✔️implementing best HR practices. 

“The main responsibility of an HR is, by using HR tools and practices, engaging an employee into the corporate life of the company, get them interested, and give an opportunity of personal development and realization while increasing the employee’s efficiency for achieving the business goals. The team cooperation of a recruiter and an HR specialist, where the first one engages the talents, and the second one makes it possible for them to grow, is what ensures the company’s steadiness and profitability.”

Maria Prisyazhnaiya, HR Specialist  Сlovertech

Recruiting and HR specialties

In highly competitive labor markets, like the IT one is, the recruiting process is rather time-consuming and catches a lot of attention. To optimize the resources, recruiting duties are often divided into several specialties: researcher, sourcer, recruiter, and specialist whose duty is engaging talents. Such division helps cover numerous vacancies at the same time and find candidates faster. 

So what do the specialists do? 

A researcher is the starting point of entering recruitment. In fact, a researcher is an assistant who helps find more contacts. 

A sourcing specialist is a specialist whose four main duties are: finding a candidate, checking their qualifications for position suitability, revealing the vacancy details, and involving them to take part in the recruitment processes. Sourcing specialists are irreplaceable when it comes to finding a professional of a rare specialty. 

A recruiter is the one who holds all stages of recruitment, interviewing, reveals the cooperation conditions, and organizes a job offer. 

Depending on the experience, recruiters are divided into three levels: junior, middle, and senior. 

✔️Junior is an employee who has just entered the profession. They have the least experience and require consistent guidance.
✔️Middle has a certain experience, fills several vacancies at the same time, but still lacks the “helicopter view” that comes only with time and experience.
✔️Senior has a deep sphere understanding, is experienced at working in different companies, is on the same page with the candidates, and fills the most difficult positions.

“Clovertech is not an exception. On our recruitment team of 2 recruiters, one is experienced in the IT field, while the other one came with no IT experience; however, she was striving to grow and understand the sphere. It’s widely spread that even if recruiters have uneven entry levels (f.e., one has some experience, and the other doesn’t have any), the employees come to the same specific knowledge level in some time. It takes 6 to 9 months on average for recruiters to become equally qualified at IT specifics.”

Natalie Urusova, HRD Clovertech

Talent acquisition specialist is engaged in the strategic work of finding and involving talented candidates, predicting recruitment needs, and building a pool of candidates for the long term. 

As regards the Clovertech HR team, it consists of the HRD, HR Specialist, Employer Brand Manager, and two Technical Recruiters. 

HRD is a manager who is deeply expertized in both HR and business, coordinates and offers solutions that are to help the business scale up with no losings in the company’s structure at different stages of its development. Processes automatization, working on corporate policy based on the business strategy, consulting the top-management, analyzing the competitors’ terms, reviewing salaries market and motivation systems are the things that allow the company to be in the resourced condition on the market and achieve the set goals. 

HR Specialist embodies the HR products that are aimed at solving long-term goals, displaying values, ​​and promoting corporate culture. HR accompanies the employee throughout their entire life cycle at the company, starting from Onboarding, and ending up at Offboarding. HR also conducts 1-on-1 with employees, identifies risks, consults on issues related to work, development, and helps in resolving conflict situations. Provides leaders with team insights, helps young leaders make decisions related to the team (motivation, development, studies, assessment, conflict situations), which increases the efficiency and involvement of the team. 

Employer Brand Manager is a specialist who is expertise in developing and implementing an employer’s brand strategy for brand recognizability on the market. They create and published all important posts, articles, and releases to the SMM channels; establish business and partnerships with various media, participate in the formation of the external communication strategy, maintain the domestic corporate culture; take part in organizing various home and external events, filming videos, writing scripts. 

“In addition to being a good listener, and HRD must understand how is Revenue generated, what are ROI and Retention. If the former is simple to master, it’s also important to learn to realize you are a partner for the CEO, who maintains the fine line between the Employee’s growing zone and Business needs. And even though it is not so easy to achieve, that is the thing you have to strive for.” 

Natalie Urusova, HRD Сlovertech

What are the specifics of IT recruiting?

An IT recruiter has to understand how does the project/company searches specialists for work, what technologies are used. They must distinguish between frontend and backend, understand the market, competitor companies, their disadvantages, advantages, and trends. They must understand the difference between product, outsource, and our staff companies. On the other hand, a recruiter does not evaluate the technical knowledge of a candidate, they rather must talk to the person, study their profile, experience, and esteem if the candidate matches the team. 

A recruiter can work:

✔️in the staff of a single project;
✔️at outsourcing or part-time at various projects;
✔️on a freelance (at agencies or separately). 

The practice of paying bonuses to recruiters for filling vacancies is a common thing for outsourcing. At product companies, higher salary rates are offered instead of such bonuses; this aims to focus the recruiter’s attention not on the number, but on the quality of candidates. 

A perfect recruiter: the top skills

• ✔️communication (tone of voice); 
• ✔️conducting negotiations; 
• ✔️empathy, understanding people and their actions;
• ✔️efficient time management;
• ✔️well-developed logic and being able to build causal relationships;
• ✔️responsibility. 

“It is crucial for a recruiter to be able to build causal relationships and understand the specifics of the business. Some say that a recruiter should also love people, but it seems to me that it’s not so much in “love” as in the recruiter’s curiosity to observe, analyze and draw conclusions.”

Natalie Urusova, HRD Сlovertech

How to become a recruiter and where to study for it

Unfortunately, there are no universities in Ukraine that would train recruiters. There are only universities that teach and graduate students with a degree in Psychology. Thus, the only way to learn the profession is to study on one’s own and look for additional educational opportunities on the market. People often switch to this profession from related fields like economics, sales support, and even journalism. The IT market is so dynamic that the companies are ready to hire inexperienced people for entry positions. However, understanding the specifics of the work is required. The rest of the skills can be mastered during the working process. 

The recruiter’s job: facts and figures

• ✔️How much does a recruiter gain? $500–2500 (depending on the company and the specialist’s level).
• ✔️The fastest filled vacancy – less than a week (from the moment of opening the position to the specialist’s first day).
• ✔️The slowest filled vacancy – 9-10 months from the moment of opening the vacancy to the specialist’s first day (If the vacancy has been open for more than a year, there is simply no urgent need for it or it is least prioritized).
• ✔️Is a specialized degree required? No, it isn’t.
• ✔️Is it possible to find a job having no experience? Yes. 
• ✔️On average, how many vacancies does a middle recruiter fill at the same time? From 5 to 15 (depending on the complexity).
• ✔️Most job openings at the same time –  25. 

Things to read and watch for recruiters and HR specialists

1. Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh
2. Multicolored Management by Valerii Pekar
3. Hug Your People by Jack Mitchell