I'm seeing more online content, especially on LinkedIn, about moving recruitment from being an HR function to a marketing function.

While it's encouraging to see employers and suppliers look at the place recruitment has in business, why not have it report into a Chief Recruitment Officer or CEO, rather than a CMO or HR Director?

Ask a CEO what one of their key problems are, and invariably it will be recruitment and finding the right people.

It's a function that is important enough to drive its own mandate, and from there look at the skills, tools and relationships that best serve the business.

And while marketing has many lessons for recruitment, in terms of making the message about the audience, how they are accessed and how they are engaged - it brings its own problems. How many websites have a clear message for their target audience?

In many ways recruitment is a bridging role and you can see how other bridging roles have come to the fore as business evolves - think Chief Commercial Officer, S&OP, DevOps, RevOps. Even Product Management, looking at you Product Search.

Roles that bring together relevant parts of any business for better purpose.

Recruitment is no different, and what it looks like from one business to another will always be contextual.

Does it serve speed and volume, requiring a transactional process that favours efficiency and administration?

Does it service a skills short candidate marketplace, requiring nuanced branding and marketing?

Instead of a fixed view that all recruitment is the same, consider how recruitment can best serve your business and make the right investment in tools, process and skills to get the return you need.

In a scaling tech business, your first internal recruiter will likely need a mix of skills around stakeholder management, critical path project management, business analysis, administration, marketing (content & copy, enabling automation, appropriate channel access etc).

But that will change over time.

While the recruitment specific behaviours and skills around candidate experience and employer experience should be a given and always be developed.

Rather than argue "isn't it better that recruitment be a marketing" or summat function, why not look at how it can best serve your business and build it from there?

Afer all if you don't get your recruitment right, there's little reason to complain about not being able to find the right candidates.