Hunters, Gatherers, and Farmers

Remember the stories of hunters vs gatherers in the early early days? Members of society were classified into categories, they were either skilled to be a hunter, gatherer or later on a farmer. These classification dependent on many things including build, skills, ability to hunt, skills for nurturing. What does that have to do with recruiting? Well, the same classification can be applied to recruiters as well. Hang on,  before you start scratching your head too much and go bald, let me explain. Recruiters aren’t just good, bad or meh. How do you know your hunters vs gatherers vs farmers? Let’s take the same analogy. The gatherers collect all types of food source that is available in plenty, i.e. berries, leafy greens, mushrooms, and things that grow in abundance. They might have to throw away a small percentage for the defectiveness. But they collect a lot. The hunters go out and hunt the game. Back in those days, you had to hunt large animals. After a whole day’s or weeks worth, the hunters could have come back with low number of hunts. Then comes the farmer, who is evolved. The farmer doesn’t just care about the hunt or the gathering. He cares about the long term goals. He is believes in loving and caring for his crops that will one day yield him and the people around him nutrition. However, when you compare the three, yeah the gatherers collected more that was in abundance, but the hunters brought in the other side of the equation which is much needed. Food that’s rich in protein and a necessity as well. And we all know that as humanity evolved we needed the farmer more and more. Recruiters are the same, the hunters will hunt for the the candidate that matches the skill-set, they won’t submit 5 candidates for a highly technical role, they will submit two. If you don’t fit the exact same description, they don’t care. But those two will be quality candidates that the managers will interview. The gathering recruiters will submit 10 resumes to 1 req, or 100 resumes to 10-20 reqs. They play the numbers game. They care about filling their database with as manyresumes as possible. These are usually with position in Customer Service, data entry, and such. These recruiters will say “the more I submit the higher chances of hiring someone.” Sometimes it is needed, since clients will have need for 30 Customer Service Reps that need to start on Monday and it’s Thursday at 3pm. The farmers care about your career growth. Like my good friend and recruiter Kacy Knight says, “A farmer is more of a relationship builder.” They are in it for the long term with you. They want to see you grow in your career and are genuinely there for you. While we are so used to gatherer recruiters we also need the hunter and the farmer. They make a perfect balance, can’t survive without each one of them.