Recruiters play a vital role in the business world. They’re tasked with recruiting employees—the heartbeat of every organization—and filling the positions that help a company grow and thrive.
According to the head of talent at Instacart, Matthews Caldwell, “a good recruiting process focuses and aligns recruiters to deliver the best to the organization. Ultimately, recruiting really should be viewed as a business partner, someone who is critical to the success of the business.” That’s why as your business grows and evolves, recruitment roles you have on your team should grow and evolve as well.
Recruiting team makeup differs per company and depends on the size, priorities, budget, and a number of other factors. So, what are the different recruitment roles, what responsibilities do they entail and how do you decide which ones you need to have on your team? Let’s find out!
What’s in?
- Recruiter
- Sourcer
- Recruitment manager
- Recruitment coordinator
- Recruitment marketing manager
- Employer brand manager
- Technical recruiter
- Campus recruiter
- Executive recruiter
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1. Recruiter
A recruiter is likely the first recruitment role you’ll have on your team. Recruiters are responsible for all aspects of recruiting throughout the entire process, from sourcing candidates to scheduling interviews and beyond. This is especially true for smaller teams and startups, which typically start out with just a recruiter before expanding the recruiting department.
The average recruiter salary is $50,797 in the U.S., with a lot of room for growth and career development as your recruiting team expands. While you may start with just a recruiter, you’ll eventually want to grow your recruiting team to support your hiring efforts.
Why you need it: At a bare minimum, every growing organization needs a recruiter to focus full-time on hiring new people. It’s a great starting point, and as your business grows, you can divide up the responsibilities as new recruiting team members come on board.
2. Sourcer
Despite a common misconception that recruiters and sourcers do the same thing, the roles are actually quite different when it comes to responsibilities. While a recruiter may help with sourcing early on, once you hire a dedicated sourcer, they’ll spend all their team selecting and hiring amazing talent for your organization. Sourcers are responsible for finding the best places to source talent online and offline.
They’re also tasked with engaging passive candidates, managing internal referrals, and coming up with creative sourcing strategies to locate the best talent in the biz. Then, a recruiter can take it from there and begin getting to know candidates and learning who’s the best fit for the organization. On average, a talent sourcer in the U.S. makes a $62,966 salary.
Why you need it: Especially if you’re hiring for niche or highly specialized roles, you need a sourcing expert in place to find the best candidates out there—and that requires expertise. Working alongside a recruiter, sourcers are able to bring them top-quality candidates that are an excellent fit for both the role and company as a whole.
Sourced candidates comprise a significant part of successful hires. That’s why a dedicated sourcer can be a valuable recruitment role to fill on your team.
3. Recruitment manager
Recruitment manager is a more senior role, which entails overseeing a company’s recruiting strategy and processes in its entirety. That means they’re responsible for everything from modifying recruiting workflows and supervising the recruiting team to monitoring the recruiting team’s performance.
Generally speaking, recruitment managers aim to make their company’s recruitment efforts as efficient and effective as possible. In the U.S., the average salary for a recruitment manager is around $73,261, though some can make a six-figure salary with the right track record.
Why you need it: As both your company and recruiting team grow larger, you’ll need to bring on a recruitment job dedicated to overseeing recruiting from a high level—a recruitment boss, if you will. By bringing on a recruitment manager, you can free your recruiters, sourcers, and other team members to focus on finding and engaging candidates.
4. Recruitment coordinator
A recruitment coordinator is typically an entry-level role on the recruiting team. Recruitment coordinators support recruiters and sourcers in their efforts to engage job candidates. This means posting open job listings to the appropriate job boards and sourcing channels, coordinating interviews and travel, conducting background checks, creating offer letters, and many other supportive tasks.
The average recruitment coordinator salary is $48,741 in the U.S. The recruitment coordinator role is a great position for candidates looking to break into the recruiting field after college or when changing careers, as there’s a lot of growth opportunity.
Why you need it: The bigger your company gets, the more you’ll need a recruitment coordinator to help manage all the ins and outs of the process. Then, when you need to hire a new recruiter, you can first look to your coordinators to consider promoting them internally. It’s really a win-win!
5. Recruitment marketing manager
Global head of sourcing and employment brand at SAP, Matthew Jeffrey, said it best: “Recruitment IS marketing. If you’re a recruiter nowadays and you don’t see yourself as a marketer, you’re in the wrong profession.”
He’s not wrong; there’s a strong link between recruiting and marketing, which is why the recruiting marketing manager role is one you definitely need on your team—especially long-term. A recruitment marketing manager is responsible for leading the recruitment marketing strategy, budget, and processes with a cost-effective, high-impact approach.
These individuals are focused on creating impactful demand generation programs and recruitment marketing campaigns to grow their talent network and build a strong pipeline of both active and passive candidates. The average salary for a recruiting manager with marketing management skills is $57,391 in the U.S.
Why you need it: Recruitment marketing managers are incredibly strategic individuals who focus day in and day out on how to attract more quality candidates and drive them through the talent pipeline. By hiring a recruitment marketing manager, you can expand your efforts to include email, content, campaigns, social media, and more.
Talent engagement is becoming more and more important in recruitment and the role of specialized recruitment marketing managers is much needed in modern recruiting teams.
6. Employer brand manager
According to a report by LinkedIn, 72% of recruiting leaders worldwide agree that employer brand has a significant impact on hiring. However, for a mid- to large-sized company especially, building out a strong employer brand takes time. That’s why you should have a recruitment role on your team that’s dedicated full-time to employer branding.
An employer brand manager is tasked with defining the employer value proposition (EVP) and brand identity. Armed with this information, they find ways to uncover employee stories and amplify employer branding across all channels. Typically, that means managing the career site, candidate-facing sites like Glassdoor and Indeed, and creating target messaging for different employee and candidate personas.
In the U.S., the average employer brand manager makes $73,698. As they grow, employer brand managers can then move up to focus on more senior marketing and/or recruitment roles at your organization. Many employer brand managers are also responsible for social media.
Why you need it: As we said before, employer branding is essential and has a significant impact on hiring efforts. To attract and appeal to candidates, you need a dedicated individual who can build the foundation for your internal culture and employer brand as a whole.
7. Technical recruiter
These days, just about every business is powered by technology in some way, shape, or form. But as companies look to bring on technology-based roles, they’re realizing the average recruiter doesn’t possess the technical knowledge to find qualified candidates—especially for incredibly complex positions.
Enter a technical recruiter, who’s uniquely qualified to focus on filling technology positions on your team, from data scientists and engineers to UX designers and software developers. Technical recruiters are knowledgeable about the various hard and soft skills necessary for success in open recruitment jobs in technology.
The average technical recruiter makes a $56,864 salary in the U.S. As more and more companies become tech-focused, demand for technical recruiters grows. And if your competitors have a tech recruiter in place to fill information technology (IT) roles, then you need one too in order to maintain a competitive edge.
Why you need it: If you need top-performing tech talent on your team, then you also need a technical recruiter to find and engage them. That doesn’t necessarily mean you need to hire a recruiter with specific experience in the tech industry—only that you need someone who’s dedicated to learning about the different positions available and determining the best way to engage quality candidates.
A good tech recruiter on your recruiting team is invaluable in hiring IT professionals.
8. Campus recruiter
Hiring undergraduate students, graduate students, and recent graduates is an important aspect of recruiting for every company. These roles are essential, as they fill much-needed internship, traineeship and entry-level positions within organizations.
A campus recruiter, also called a university or a graduate recruiter, is focused on connecting with students on college campuses and engaging them to fill open roles. Campus recruiters travel to career fairs all over the country (and the world), hosting on-campus events to share information, and develop employer branding strategies to specifically appeal to college students. With the limited ability to participate in live events at the moment, they need to come up with new strategies to engage graduate talent.
On average, a campus recruiter in the U.S. earns $60,550 per year. Campus recruiting roles are a great fit for recruiters who are passionate about coaching entry-level talent to support them as they enter the workforce.
Why you need it: Hiring and nurturing young talent is an essential part of the recruiting process. Today’s top entry-level employees could be tomorrow’s top performers—especially if you have a great company culture and strong career development opportunities.
9. Executive recruiter
Great leadership is the foundation of every successful company—but finding and recruiting quality executives can be incredibly challenging. Executive roles are both high pressure and high salary jobs, so a lot is at stake for the company, as well as for the recruiters hiring them.
Executive recruiters specialize in hiring great leaders and C-suite members to guide their organization to success. Similar to technical and campus recruiters, executive recruiters spend all of their time focused on finding the best talent available in the industry. Great executive recruiters know not only which qualifications to look for, but also the soft skills that are important in a leader. The average executive recruiter in the U.S. makes around $66,080 per year.
Why you need it: Companies are only as effective as their leadership. To truly grow your business and realize success, you need a specialist to hone in on how and where to find the right people for the right executive roles. While you may not bring an executive recruiter on right away—or you may dedicate half a role to executive recruiting and the other half to other recruiting responsibilities—having a specialist to focus on building the leadership team is critical for success.
A final note
If you’re looking to expand or restructure your recruitment team, determine your priorities, see which recruitment roles you need the most, and start from there. Of course, the roles on your team can overlap too. For example, a big part of a recruiter’s job might also be to focus on employer branding. Or, your executive recruiter may also focus on recruiting for other managerial roles.
However, be careful to strike a balance to ensure your recruiting team members aren’t overworked or underutilized, and that you’re growing your recruiting team at the right pace for your organization. The result will be a rock-solid recruitment department that fills open roles with the best candidates out there—but it starts with recruiting great recruiters!
