Finding the right HRBP in a crowded market
Recruiting for your HR team – do you look at this task fondly or worry about getting it right? 🤔
For many senior HR leaders, hiring is both an opportunity and a challenge. It’s a chance to strengthen team capability, plug knowledge gaps, bring in fresh thinking and help shape the future of the function. At the same time, it has to be balanced alongside the demands of the day job. Some leaders will have the support of an in-house Talent Acquisition team, while others manage their HR recruitment alongside everything else. Regardless, time and focus are often stretched.
What we consistently hear from our clients is that attracting candidates isn’t the hard part. In fact, advertising alone can generate huge volumes of applications, often very swiftly. The real challenge is identifying the right people quickly enough. Wading through profiles that, on paper appear close to the brief, finding the time to assess them properly, and keeping the interview process slick and well-timed so strong candidates aren’t lost along the way.
We thought it would be useful to share a little insight into what we’ve seen in the HR market over the past 12 months and what actually happens once a role goes live and gets advertised on LinkedIn.
Last year we hired a real mix of HR roles, generalist roles through to specialists in L&D, TA, HR Ops, Reward and Data Analytics. We worked across sectors with SMEs through to large FTSE 100s. When we look back though, the majority of our roles were generalist with many given the HR Business Partner title. Some HRBP roles were operationally focused, others more strategic. The HR Business Partner title as we know, can be quite broad and covers a wide salary band! Over the years, we’ve seen them advertised from £35k to £140k and everything in between.
Focusing on a recent HRBP hire…
⇒ Based in Berkshire and advertised at £55–65k. 298 CVs came through from the advert – but what was the brief and how did those CVs stack up?
The range of applications was vast. We saw HR Advisors looking to step up, TA professionals keen to pivot into a generalist role, and others seeking to step down from more senior positions having decided that culture and values-alignment meant more to them than level or salary. From those 298 CVs, 1 successful placement came from:
- 37 CVs were longlisted and subsequently called
- 13 had interviews with HRLife
- 5 CVs were shared with the client
- 3 candidates reached the final stage
For some hiring managers, receiving nearly 300 CVs is exciting. It represents a decent reach in the market, gives them the chance to select and meet great people and explore what’s out there. For others, it can raise understandable questions:
- How do I find the right person amongst that number of CVs?
- How do I fit this in around an already busy role?
- How can I make sure the CVs I shortlist are a good reflection of the person and their personality
- How can I coordinate a slick, well-timed process
- How can I reply to everyone and give them the candidate experience they deserve?
- What will the impact on our brand be if I don’t give a positive candidate experience?
If you don’t have the time and resources to invest in doing this yourself we can help remove the noise and identify the talent that genuinely meets your brief. Not just in a skills match, but in experience, behaviours, values, and cultural alignment. You’ll receive a curated shortlist of candidates who have all been met, interviewed and assessed.
Perhaps you’d like to explore what value you can get from a specialist HR recruiter, if so we’d love to have a conversation.