According to us, great organisations drive growth by hiring great people who do great work. This growth creates further opportunities for the organisation to bring in more great people. These people, in turn, create even more growth for the organisation. Repeat.

We’ve used the word great five times so far, but – what does ‘great’ really mean? For any organisation, before you start hiring people who will drive your growth, it is necessary to define your benchmark of great. Then, you need to identify, sell to, and bring in these great people to join your organisation. For early-stage startups, founders should be doing (and actually do) most of the hiring. But at scale, that doesn’t scale, so you need to build a recruiting team that will ensure a continuous flow of great into the organisation. Overall, any recruiting team’s role has two primary parts – Selling and Buying. In that order. Let’s zoom into both these parts for a bit.

Selling

The recruitment team is first supposed to make the person you are talking to for a potential role in your organisation want to join your organisation. So, a recruiter’s role is to “sell” three things to the other person: the vision, the role, and the organisation’s values. Great recruiters have to embody the values of the organisation. It should be clearly visible in their actions and behaviour – from the first shake of hands to the last – because first impressions are also almost always the last. At the end of this process, the other person should really buy into what you are doing, and should want to join you.

Buying

Once the person is sold on the organisation, the recruiter becomes a buyer and is supposed to “buy” two things – culture fit, and skill fit. In that order. If your definition of great is the right one, you should be saying no to more people on the basis of culture than on the basis of skill.

The reality is that great people aren’t just going to walk in. Someone needs to reach out to them, share the dream, and get them to be a part of your organisation. Only a great recruitment team can make this possible. But – circular reference alert – what makes a great recruiter?

A recruiter has to be a great seller, as well as a great buyer; most people are only good at one of the two. This means a recruiter’s job is more complex than most others, because s/he needs to be great at both these things. It also means that a recruitment team is the most difficult one to build, and is something you should build before you start building the rest of the organisation.

Traditionally, recruitment is seen as a buyer-seller transaction where the seller (the candidate) must prove themselves to the buyer (the recruiter) by navigating through interviews. That’s a load of bulls**t. The way you should think about recruitment is anything but traditional. Think of it as courtship. Both the organisation (the recruiting team) and the person have to fall in love with each other. Otherwise, the outcome is going to be a relationship that’s anything but great.

#plug If you feel you are a great recruiter, please write in to me at s@zomato.com. We are looking for greatness across the globe.