How to not suck when leading work to change recruiter role expectations

This post first appeared on John’s Try Harder is Not a Strategy LinkedIn Newsletter.

Everybody I speak with in TA leadership roles wants their team of recruiters operating as Talent Advisors. Everybody. I've been writing a lot these past few years about why now - especially with the arrival of AI and automation - we must show up differently and go way beyond transactional in our value add to the business.

I was in Sydney a few weeks ago, speaking to a group of regional heads of TA over lunch, and most are deploying new expectations for the recruiter role within their companies. New competencies, new performance expectations, new conversations they want them to have with the business, with HR, with candidates.

It made me reflect on my time as a senior TA leader, trying to effect change to the recruiter role. I want to highlight something I learned the hard way:

You can't say you want X, and then punish X

Many leaders - not just in TA, but all leaders tasked with rolling out big changes to role expectations - are asking their employees to change up how they do their jobs day to day. Not just a mindset shift, but changing actual behaviors, leading different conversations, using new tools, working with new stakeholders, and maybe doing it all with brand new measures of success.

One of the most effective way to make sure role changes DON'T stick and DON'T lead to real change is to say you want recruiters operating as Talent Advisors, and then continuing to manage and reward them as if they were transactional recruiters. We can't punish them for being talent advisors. Duh. But often, as leaders, we fall into old habits, too.

We need to check our own behaviors - are we sending mixed messages?

Mixed messages. Ugh. Hate those. My Mom used to say, "do as I say, not as I do" as she'd smoke cigarettes when I was young. She thought it was funny to say, but there was truth in her request, as she had the self-awareness to know that she was sending mixed messages.

So, when we - as TA leaders - are asking our recruiters to show up differently, which might include:

• leading a tough conversation with - and play an order taker role with - a hiring manager that's unrealistic about pay,
• pushing back harder on bad practices, leading to a frustrated hiring manager who wants you to schedule that 12 person interview team and bring back a candidate he's been sitting on for 3 months for another round of interviews,
• getting out of our traditional lane to talk to a high volume hiring manager about her root issues for high turnover (risking upsetting the HRBP, who may escalate),
• and 100 other talent advising things.

These new behaviors will feel risky if the past was all about "pleasing the customer, the hiring manager," and they absolutely won't stick if we punish them for operating more like a talent advisor by using the same old "are you happy with my driving" surveys to hiring managers, making them feel bad when you got sucked into an escalation with an upset hiring manager or HRBP who wants the old order-taker mindset, or literally rewarding them for doing things that should be automated (like scheduling, some parts of sourcing) while punishing them for not making time to be "more strategic."

Ugh.

I remember my first CHRO-led all hands meeting with the 12,000 person company I worked at in my early 20s. He said, "culture is the behaviors you reward and punish."

That stuck with me.

New competency models, new hiring goals, big investments in talent advisor training, new scorecards, new org and role expectation announcements...none of those things will lead to any kind of real, lasting change if we - as TA leaders - aren't reinforcing and rewarding the NEW behaviors, the NEW conversations, the TALENT ADVISOR role expectations, and punishing the old stuff. And AI isn't going to do that stuff for us.

Remember, effecting real change is a full contact sport. It's not something we can do via PowerPoint, emails, and group meetings.

So, let me know - what are you doing differently as a TA leader to make sure you're sending clear messaging followed up with clear changes to how you reward behaviors? What works best when you're trying to make lasting change to the role expectations you have of the recruiter role? Please share.