Wikipedia defines frienemies as “either an enemy disguised as a friend or a partner who is simultaneously a competitor and rival.”   Think about it: In your experience, are recruiting and HR enemies disguised as friends, rivals, or true business partners?

Over the years, I have witnessed many organizations in which HR and recruiting are indeed frienemies. In other words, the relationship on paper is good, but there is an undercurrent of something you can’t quite put your finger on. I’ve often wondered, “Was that a dig just now?” as someone offered a comment that could have really been either a compliment or a jab.

Let’s examine the differences between friends and frienemies in more detail:

Friends…

• Protect one another’s interests
• Respect each other’s differences
• Value one another’s contributions
• Support and reinforce the efforts of the other
• Respectfully disagree
• Encourage direct communication

Frienemies…

• Shift the focus off the other person’s accomplishments
• Devalue the other person’s function
• Downplay the other person’s contributions
• Undermine the other person’s efforts
• Circumvent direct communications and favor gossip or tattle-tailing
• Plague new ideas with negativity

Frienemies in action

I’ve listened in on many meetings where one party talked about what was wrong with the new hires recruiting had brought on, or a manager mentioned that HR was not responding to some need. Such is the life of “frienemies,” as they just can’t help themselves.  They sabotage you and secretly (or maybe not so secretly) enjoy it.

I’ve also witnessed many organizations where these two parties work powerfully in tandem. High levels of accountability and consistency are hallmarks of this type of environment, so it’s no surprise that these organizations happen to be the highest performing ones.

The potential for conflict between HR and recruiting is high, even though they often share a reporting structure. This is due in part to fundamental differences between the two groups:

1. Each focuses on different skill sets.
2. Often they are blended into the same hierarchy, typically under an HR umbrella, implying that greater value belongs to HR.
3. HR may have more authority than recruiting.
4. Recruiting is typically more operations-focused.
5. HR is about administration and compliance.
6. Recruiting is about selling an employment value proposition and company culture.

Most of the time, someone who is really good at HR rarely favors recruiting, and vice versa. This is because recruiting is more sales oriented, where HR is more administration oriented — and these are completely different skill sets.  There is no good or bad; they are just different.

I will confess that I have my own biases. I started out strictly dedicated to talent acquisition. I would have made a terrible HR generalist. The thought of having to handle compensation and benefits was enough to send me into the fetal position in a corner. And here’s the key: You don’t want me doing that work — it’s not what I’m best at. The value I bring to an organization is in selling their employment value proposition to the market and figuring out who should work for them.

How can HR and recruiting work better together?

Organizations that are most effective understand and value the differences between HR and recruiting.  They don’t elevate one and cripple the other; they work in partnership. What does that look like in real life?

• At an organizational level, this means that how we bring people into an organization matches how we evaluate their performance over time. It means that the promises we make on the front end are fulfilled post-hire. Both departments have to work together to ensure a consistent process and experience, from the first time we speak with a potential candidate through the last day of employment.
• Day to day, it boils down to how a recruiter and an HR generalist each does his or her job. When a recruiter is hiring a new employee, he or she thinks about the fit for the long haul. The recruiter doesn’t set unrealistic expectations for an employee that creates employee relation problems later. The recruiter thinks it all the way through and supports the efforts that happen after the offer is accepted.
• From an HR perspective, the generalist coaches the manager to separate management and hiring issues. They don’t allow the recruiter to be surprised by sudden staff changes or a change in the urgency of the need. They sound a warning when the manager is about to make a decision without involving the recruiting department that impacts how talent is brought on board.

Both functions working together can be a powerful engine to move an organization toward their performance goals. Being frienemies is a handicap, and undermines both efforts. It can unknowingly encourage operations to dismiss or even ignore all of recruiting and HR’s efforts.

It’s a choice you must also make. Have you chosen to be  “frienemies” with your recruiting or HR colleague — or true business partners?

I remember once walking across my college campus and noticing several groups of people snickering. I looked up to find the target of their stares: A girl walking ahead of me. She was wearing a flouncy miniskirt (which was very cool at the time) and she was completely unaware of the attention of the groups of people around her — attention brought on by the fact that the back half of her skirt was accidentally tucked into the waist of her underwear for the entire world to see.

Similarly, many organizations today are completely unaware that they are exposing their hiring “underwear” to the world.

There’s no real “getting away” from the public eye now; just ask any celebrity who just been caught picking their nose in public, only to have a picture of it published in the media that very day. Still, companies need to be much more aware of what is going on around them and how their actions are viewed by others before getting out into the public eye.

The Internet power shift

Candidates and employees have more power than ever before to use social media to reveal and comment on company behavior that used to stay locked behind company doors. Bad behavior is coming to light more often. And I think it’s a positive change; it’s time for us to be held accountable for proper hiring practices. Too often, we have swept poor hiring tactics under the rug, and those in authority didn’t really care about their actions, as there were no immediate or tangible consequences.

Are you a manager who is notoriously rude during interviews? Do you ask inappropriate questions?  Are you just plain lame in an interview setting? Or has your company asked someone to come in seven times for interviews, forcing the candidate to use up his or her entire vacation time, and then refused the candidate a  job offer?

It’s time to ask ourselves how this behavior would make us feel if we were in a candidate’s shoes, particularly in our current economy, as many people looking for jobs are frustrated, worn out, and looking  for a place to vent their frustrations. Turns out they don’t have to look very far — candidates with even just a little savvy can create YouTube videos, tweets, or blog post rants bemoaning their experience in seconds.

How much would it change the game if, in addition to candidates having the ability to spread negative company experiences, specific managers’ reputations were available to savvy candidates (typically the ones we most want to hire)? I propose that they already are. Anyone can do Google or LinkedIn research and find people to speak with, profiles, articles, and more that reveal how the manager truly behaves. We just aren’t thinking about that in a grand sense yet. I think we should.

I like the idea of candidates asserting themselves a bit and owning the fact that they are a primary decision maker in our hiring process. We should be partnering with them to find ways to make the process better — not inciting people to poison the candidate market from which we need to hire.

I’m not trying to tell you the sky is falling. Individuals have a remarkable way of being reasonable when a company makes a mistake or admits its flaws. It’s those who have been abused that we need to worry about. As the old adage goes, “no one will sue someone they like.” I think the same is true for potentially embarrassing rants and raves online. Good and reasonable people with whom we have positive relationships are not likely to scold us in public. The best managers and companies — those who embody a great place to work — will build fan clubs of people who want to work there now or in the future (including people who didn’t get the job for which they just interviewed.)

Transparency brings an unfamiliar level of accountability when it comes to hiring people. It may feel uncomfortable, but in the end, it’s going to make the whole process better for everyone.

After all, it’s always a smart idea to turn and check the mirror before you walk out in public.

Behavioral interviewing, for those not familiar, is a method of questioning that requires the respondent to answer with a story of how they handled a specific circumstance. It’s designed to get the candidate to reveal how they responded to a real life work situation so we can understand how they might respond to a similar situation if they were hired.

What are the inherent pros to this interview style?

1. We get real-life examples to help us assess how someone will perform in the future. I love behavioral interviews —I never tire of hearing the stories people tell and what they did or didn’t do to solve a problem. There is always something we can learn from what a candidate states or doesn’t state in an interview answer.
2. We can get into deeper detail than other interview questions. With a couple of probing questions beyond an initial response, you can reveal some important details about a candidate that may not come out in other interview formats. For example, you can get specific details about a candidate’s real contribution to a project, or find out how they dealt with an unpredictable circumstance.
3. The focus storytelling enables almost all candidates to interview more effectively.   Let’s face it: Interviewing is scary for most people. Some people will always be better storytellers than others, but it’s in every human’s DNA to be able to convey a story. Even candidates who are naturally shy or introverted —tendencies that inhibit their ability to sell themselves — can come alive when you ask them a behavioral interview-style question. It is much more comfortable and easy for a candidate to tell you a story than respond to a firing squad of questions.

Behavioral interviewing isn’t a perfect method, however — it has weaknesses which often become all too apparent when it comes to the actual asking of the questions.

Consider the following to keep your behavioral interviews on track:

1. Questions must be designed with behavior in mind. Behavioral interviewing is certainly the best predictor of future behavior, but if we don’t design the questions correctly, the information we receive may not enable better decision making. Even if you think your behavioral questions are designed perfectly, consider whether they will elicit the behavior you are seeking to measure.
2. Don’t ask leading questions. If you tell the candidate what you are trying to discern before you ask the actual question, it’s like giving them the answer on a test. For example, making a statement like, “Team work is very important here” before you ask a question about a candidate’s work experience on a group project is a bit leading. They already know what you are assessing.  Try to stick to questions without leading with qualifying statements.
3. The interviewer must still control the interview. Asking this level of open-ended questions (questions that require a thoughtful answer beyond a simple yes or no) can send you “down a rabbit hole” in many situations. Candidates are nervous in interview situations and have a tendency to ramble on or focus on details that are not relevant to the information you are seeking. You must be able to re-focus the discussion and stay on track.
4. The storytelling technique is another excellent way for an interviewer to relay information to a candidate. Candidates, like anyone else, have a tendency to hear what they want to hear as opposed to what you intend them to hear. If you want to make a point they will remember, consider telling anecdotal stories that will help a candidate truly understand what the position is about and what kinds of results you are looking for.

All in all, behavioral interviews are still one of the greatest leaps forward in the history of recruitment, but that doesn’t eliminate the responsibilities that come along with conducting this type of interview. When using behavioral interviewing techniques, be direct and upfront to ensure a quality interview.

What challenges have you found with behavioral interviewing – and how have you addressed them?

Jennifer Way is a human capital management consultant with more than fifteen years of global recruiting experience. She specializes in serving high volume recruiting environments with innovative solutions that address three areas: executive/strategic recruiting, recruiting process, and recruiting technologies.