If you ever wondered why recruiters and HR personnel don’t always see eye-to-eye, could it be simply that they are wired differently and have completely differently DNAs?

That was one of the key issues discussed at the second Monster Buzz event, held in London last night and attended by Recruiter, where a panel of industry professionals led the audience in an attempt to answer the question: ‘Recruitment v HR; never the twain shall meet?’.

Donna Miller, European HR director Europe at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, told the audience that there was a fundamental difference between the two professions. “Recruiters are sales people; HR traditionally aren’t sales people and they don’t like sales… It comes down to two very different types of people and that is where the disconnect takes place,” she said.

However, Simon Boulcott, HR director at Allied Irish Bank, said that while there was a difference, to say the DNAs were completely different was going too far. “There is not a completely different DNA set but there are variations,” he said. “Recruiters need to be robust, gregarious and fairly thick skinned because working internally is hard work, and you have to chase and follow-up, so it is a slightly different mindset.” However, he added: “I see the two firmly welded together.”

Charu Malhotra, global resourcing projects manager at Unilever agreed with Miller that recruiters and HR people are “two different animals”: “For recruiters, tenacity needs to be their middle name. They need to be much more nimble than an HR person; they need to be part-coach, part-Oprah, part-counsellor, part-communications and marketing person.”

She said that an HR person “could get away with not having to be as resilient as an in-house or an external recruiter”.

Rob Jones, head of organisational effectiveness at Crossrail, disagreed that recruiters and HR people are made up differently. There was a danger of characterising all HR people as “cardigan-wearing form fillers” he said rather than the reality, which was often people “who are challenging the business, who are tenacious and gregarious”.

And he added: “The profile in the HR function going forward is going to be very different from HR now, so no I don’t think they are different DNAs.”

The panel members were:

• Simon Boulcott, HR director at Allied Irish Bank

• Rob Jones, head of organisational effectiveness at Crossrail

• Charu Malhotra, global resourcing projects manager at Unilever

• Donna Miller, European HR director Europe at Enterprise Rent-A-Car

• Do you agree with any of the panellists? Send us your views at [email protected] or post your comments below.