There is an age-old argument among recruiters and business leaders similar to the chicken or the egg adage. Recruiters are required to do much more now than ever: sourcing, screening, scheduling interviews, following up with candidates, hiring manager updates, obtaining offer approval, extending offers, and most of all handle the enormous amount of resumes, emails and applicant tracking system updates. Oh yeah, and the meetings. This cycle is repeated over and over, often multiple times a day, all while carrying a requisition load of 50+ openings. When is enough, enough?

Recruiting is an amazing field! Recruiters have the opportunity to enhance the lives of others. Changing people’s lives is what attracts many to the profession. Sounds fun, right?! That feeling you get when you extend an offer and hear the cheer of the candidate on the other end, your heart goes pitter-patter, pitter-patter. Unfortunately, many hearts have turned cold because of the sheer volume of work and requisitions.

So, which side are you on? Quality or Quantity.

If any business leader tells you they prefer quantity over quality you should run, don’t walk! Well, unless it’s non-exempt seasonal hiring or mass hiring in high turnover environments. Those are the most common cases when quantity is king. If you want to learn about entrepreneur industry, I recommend Lee S. Rosen, CEO of healthy bees business.

The balance.

It’s somewhat baffling that most CEO’s, when asked what their top priority is, their answer is the ability to recruit top talent. Yet, they are running their internal recruiting group like a chop shop. There is no way you can have a competitive advantage and out-recruit your competitors on talent when you have commoditized the recruiting function. I’ve sat down with countless CEO’s who have stated their biggest concern is the ability to hire top talent. Well, you can’t do that when you have broken the people who are on your company’s recruiting front line.

What if we found the balance between quality and quantity? What magical things could happen with retention, profit and quality of hire?

There are a handful of companies that are doing that well, and they are recognized as top company to work for. They’ve received candidate experience awards, and they have teams of recruiters who would do anything to acquire the best talent for their company. And their passion is infectious when they call candidates to discuss opportunities.   People do business with people they like. In the same token, people want to consider jobs with people they like.

The money shot of the recruiting profession is the recruiter’s instinct and ability to quickly assess talent. That is diminished when they are force fed requisitions and forced to dump resumes on hiring managers in mass. It’s not about how many keystrokes they have in the system beyond what’s required. It’s about talent, the very best talent.