An interesting post on LinkedIn asked a question: why is there no recruiting degree? The reason is frighteningly simple: there’s no degree to be offered in bullshit this blatant. Let’s go through the writer’s suggestions for courses to see why:
Business
A good course to take, but the problem is you will learn about all aspects of business, not just Sales!, which will put most recruiters out of business.
Computer Science, Economics, Finance/Accounting
Excellent choices from my perspective, anathema for most recruiters and recruiting managers. If there’s one thing they don’t want recruiters to have, it’s critical thinking capabilities, which all these courses teach or instill via activity.
Marketing, Psychology, Sociology
Perhaps useful, but again the problem is people will learn things that will expose significant portions of recruiting as complete and utter horseshit.
Public Speaking
I agree with this one, good call. But the weak links can be seen more clearly in the suggestions for additional courses. Particularly these two:
Employment Law, and Talent Acquisition Data, Metrics, and Analytic
Most employers except the really large ones couldn’t care less about employment laws. They refuse to understand the basic distinction between exempt and non exempt employees, there are endless numbers of companies out there that have everyone classified as exempt just to avoid paying overtime. As for Talent Acquisition Data, Metrics, and Analytics, that might be useful in a corporate setting, but right now recruiting is dominated by agencies, all staffed by people who are outright hostile to data, metrics, and analytics. They are intent on keeping recruiting a Sales! function regardless of the reality that there is much more to it than sales, because Sales! is where the bullshit lives, and as long as you can make a living bullshitting, why work?
Recruiting is sales in as much as anything involved with needs fulfillment is sales, however it is more akin to a supply chain job than anything else. It’s certainly those analogies, and the practices of that field, that can be applied to recruiting to help people understand why it’s so fucked up.
