Nowhere have I seen a more strained organizational relationship than the one that exists between recruiting and business development in the government contracting space. Having spent a lot of time examining this I can best explain the dynamic like this…
Simply put, business development operates in the future, operations operates in the now and recruiting is required to support both organizations. Priorities and mindsets of these three organizations are often times not aligned, which creates dissonance between them. Business development is concerned with the potential of upcoming work and operations services work underway. I am sure you have heard business development complain about recruiting not bringing candidates to the table for proposals, operations complaining about their backfills not being filled fast enough and recruiting complaining they are not receiving quality information or quick enough feedback from either. This is a very common struggle in many organizations that leads to finger pointing, posturing and the implementation of solutions that may never address the inherent problems that are creating this environment.
