Tim Sackett, SHRM-SCP, an industry veteran and author of The Talent Fix, Vol 2 (SHRM, 2024), picked apart several closely held and oft-repeated beliefs about recruiting in the closing Main Stage session of the SHRM Talent Conference & Expo 2024.

Questioning the following ideas about talent acquisition could open up new possibilities for recruiters, especially in the tough current jobs market.  

“You are the talent professionals,” Sackett said. “And even though you know that, you allow everyone else at the company to act like they know so much more about recruiting than you do. You know how to do it best and have to be able to advise on what you know.”

You Only Hire Top Talent

CEOs will say that “we only hire top talent,” but is that true? Sackett asked. Recruiters know that they don’t hire the best talent. Not all the time, every time.

“One hiring manager told me, ‘We really hire the tallest of the short people,’ ” Sackett said. “We post a job, wait for someone to apply, pick the best of who applied, and get them interviewed and hired. But just because they may be the best person who applied for your job, you may be hiring the best of the worst.”

The reason the best talent can’t always be hired is that most recruiters don’t have the time and resources to hunt for the best candidate every single time, Sackett said.

“You have 75 reqs [requisitions] to fill, and it’s impossible to find the top talent. Executives get frustrated because they don’t really understand the realities of recruiting,” he said.

Quality of Hire Is the Most Important Metric

Everyone in talent acquisition agrees that quality of hire is the Holy Grail of recruiting metrics. But who measures it, and how? Some say tenure, some say performance reviews, while still others say onboarding check-ins at 90 days.

“If it was so important, there would be a known formula that everyone would know and use,” Sackett said. “So, based on practice, it isn’t important. But I believe it is important, and we have to figure out how to measure it. It’s more difficult to figure out than the metrics companies tend to lean on, like time-to-fill.”

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