Looking for a job in recruitment or considering a recruitment career? Excellent choice! Recruitment is a fulfilling and rewarding career and I hope you love it as much as we do.
If you’re new to the industry, and frankly, even if you’re not, you might have heard the terms “180,” “270,” and “360” recruitment being tossed around and you might be wondering what these mean.
These models are different approaches to achieving the best results. Here’s what they mean and some of the pros and cons of each:
360 Recruitment – one person does this job
360 recruitment is where one person is responsible for all aspects of the recruitment journey that include finding clients, working on business development to establish client relationships, securing orders, and sourcing candidates for those clients.
You’ll find the clients through a range of means, like LinkedIn, job boards, social media, referrals, email marketing, and more. Once you have worked on building those relationships and received orders to fill, you’ll need the candidates with which to present to the client.
These candidates are, ideally, already in a pool that you have nurtured for roles like the ones you’re working on. Or, you will go and find candidates specifically for the roles. You will match the client’s needs with the right candidates, present them to the client and manage the selection process all the way through the interview, offer, placement, and starting the job.
This is typically the way that British and Irish firms are structured. Most prefer having one person doing the whole job to avoid communication breakdowns, friction, and other issues that may arise when multiple people are involved. There is a distinct benefit to this structure with respect to communication.
However, there’s also a downside, because it can be difficult to do the end-to-end job and some people struggle with managing both clients and candidates. It’s like spinning two plates at the same time.
Here are some 360 roles we have open at Raymond George:
https://www.raymondgeorge.agency/ca/job-details/?id=360-recruiter-bostonhybrid-822899
180 Recruitment – two people need to be involved here
A 180 recruiter is, as the title implies, someone that does half of the 360 role, which can be either the client half or the candidate sourcing half. So, you need two people to cover the full process.
North American staffing firms are typically structured on this model. The idea is that people should specialize in one area or the other, as each requires different skills. In its purest form this model is split right down the middle between client side and candidate side. However, how the division works can differ from business to business, and sometimes the responsibilities of each role can overlap depending on the abilities, interests, and experience of the recruiter and/or their sales partner.
Sometimes there may be one client-side salesperson to a team of candidate side recruiters, and a 180 salesperson could also be an account manager with limited business development responsibilities. Often, when you start a career in recruitment, especially in a specialist market, you’ll start and learn as an 180 consultant on the candidate side as it’s a great training opportunity and entry to recruitment.
There are similar pros and cons to 180 recruitment as to 360 recruitment; there are sometimes communication issues when two people are involved in one situation, for example, but this scenario can work fantastically when two people communicate well, are very detail oriented, and trust each other’s judgment. And again, many people may be more effective focusing on one area.
Here are some 180 roles we have open at Raymond George:
https://www.raymondgeorge.agency/ca/job-details/?id=180-recruiter-new-york-ny-822644
https://www.raymondgeorge.agency/ca/job-details/?id=creative-sales-nychybrid-874444
270 – half of one & a quarter of the other
A 270 recruiter does both client account management and candidate sourcing but does not incorporate the new business development aspect of finding the clients. So, the difference between 270 and 360 is that a 270 recruiter’s job is 1/2 working with candidates and 1/4 with clients.
It’s usually more difficult to find people who want to do the cold outreach, sales component of a 360 role, which is why this may be separated out.
In a client driven market, where finding jobs and clients is harder than finding candidates- business development is the part that people typically shy away from. Over the last few years, however, the market has shifted to a candidate driven one. This means, it’s actually harder to find and engage with candidates than clients. Clients have even been turned away by agencies swimming in orders and fortunate enough to be selective about which clients they work with. So, the sales component in our world has become more important on the recruiters side, though this will likely change again as our industry is never static!
Here is a 270 recruiter role we have open at Raymomd George:
https://www.raymondgeorge.agency/uk/job-details/?id=recruitment-consultant-875299
Recruiters in all these roles should have exceptional people skills and communication skills.
Whether you choose one or the other will come down to whether you prefer to focus on one area or another. Hopefully this information will help you decide what’s right for you.
