This one is for recruiters. Especially recruiters with a couple of years experience, who think they are good. In fact you may think you are pretty damn good!

Well, there is a huge threat facing you. And it’s not social media, or technology or the economy, or RPO, nor the rise of  in-house recruiters.

It’s you.

To be more specific, it’s your attitude. And to be even more precise, it’s your arrogance and complacency. I can’t tell you how many promising recruiters have fallen off the rails, because of early success, which they have mistakenly understood to mean they ‘know it all’.

One of the things I always look for when hiring new recruiters at Firebrand is “coachability”. I don’t even know if that’s a word, but I sure know what it means.

The ability to learn new skills, the willingness to change, a mindset which seeks improvement, and the ego which accepts there may ‘be a better way’.

I see it all the time, and have done for decades. A new recruiter has raw potential, works hard, gets some basic skills, and has some early success. God knows, we all love recognition, but why is it in this business that ‘prima donnas’ bloom so early and with so little reason? Actually I know why. We all worship at the altar of ‘fees’ in this industry. And some companies will excuse ignorance, arrogance and lack of real understanding of client and candidate need… as long as a recruiter bills. In fact they reward it. So little recruiter Johnny, who knows 2% of f***all, is now a hero because he stitched together a good quarter of billings! No wonder he thinks he knows it all!

And that is the danger period. For you. Usually after about 2 years. Complacency emerges. The barriers to learning go up. In reality, little Johnny plateaus, stagnates, and unbeknown to him, starts to whither!

Give me a dollar for every recruiter who told me ‘we always do it this way’, ‘this works for me’, ‘I know what I am doing’, or heaven save me….. ‘that won’t work in this market!’

I would be a very rich man.

Or even worse, the ‘silent antediluvian’, who does not voice disagreement, but just avoids or ignores any new tactic or advice, any technological advance. It’s not that they want to sabotage. They are just closed to any new ideas whatsoever.

Dinosaurs, who are always looking backwards, scoff at training sessions, and maintain excel spreadsheets of candidates or hard-copy résumés in their bottom drawers. FFS!

Intransigent fossils, who dismiss success by new-comers with fresh ideas, as ‘luck’, and complain that new technology, designed to help them become more efficient, merely  ‘gives them more admin to do’.

And slowly these people start to fail. And the more they fail, the more they blame it in on their employer, on the economy, on the market, on the technology, on their colleagues, on their clients, even on their admin support! Anyone, anywhere, but the real culprit. Themselves.

You want to be great at this job? Forge a real career?
 Then you have to understand the concept of your “Skills Briefcase”.

Imagine all your skills, capabilities, competencies, and knowledge – and then place them in your imaginary ‘skills briefcase’.

The question is simply this. What skills, what knowledge, what tactics, what relationships, and what competencies will be in your skills briefcase one year from now….. that are not in there today?

Or, what is in there now that was not there 12 months ago?

Nothing?

Hmm.

Tackle skills you are not good at and perfect them. Look for a mentor. Seek training and coaching. Tune into industry trends and changes and grab what you need.

Above all, be open to learning the nuances of this tough job we all do.

Anyone can match a résumé with a job description. That takes a week to learn. And you may even make some placements. But it’s the craft of recruiting I am talking about. The art. The skill of it. That takes years. Decades. Forever.

Great recruiters are sponges. For life. You are never totally ‘on top of your game‘ in this business. You can always get better.

And if you don’t, others around you most certainly will.

And then, for you, it’s welcome to the 80% of recruiters who enter our industry…and fail.

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No doubt you have been overwhelmed with high-level forecasts from wise recruiting soothsayers about 2012 being the year of mobile recruiting, the critical importance of building talent communities, the rise of employer branding… and many other trends that, truthfully, you hardly understand and definitely have little control over.

These people are smart, and much of what they say is spot on. But a lot is total hogwash too, no more than a distraction, and certainly most of it, you personally, cannot act on.

So what about the desk recruiter? The person doing the day-to-day slog? What resolutions can you make, today, that will equip you for a better year. Indeed, a better career?

Here are mine.

Fire lots of clients …now.

That’s right. Your eyes do not deceive. 2011 was truly the year of the tyre-kicker. At Firebrand we were overwhelmed with clients ‘testing’ the market, using multiple recruiters on the same brief, comparing our talent with internal candidates, withdrawing jobs at the last minute, even rescinding on offers.

2012 is the year to sort out these serial time-wasters and fire them. Don’t forget, you can choose who you do not work with. You have to prioritise your clients, and triage your job orders. Work on only those where the client is committed to working with you. Indeed you want a laser-like focus on clients who give you a return. The rest? Coach them on ways to work together. Give them another chance. Then kill off those bikers!

Spend less time on social media.

What? This is blasphemy! Spend less time? Who is this dinosaur? Well, I may be a dinosaur, but I am a dinosaur with 10,000 twitter followers, a blog read by 5,000 plus people every week, a busy Facebook page,  and many thousands of LinkedIn contacts.

So I know two things about Social Media.
i) the benefits
ii) how much time it wastes.
And you need to learn from this. Of course social media is a critical channel for recruiters. If you have not developed a social media profile yet, then get going. But don’t confuse the much touted mantra from the ‘experts’ that is ‘all about engagement,’ with banal banter and time-wasting that will lead to nothing. Don’t con yourself. Use social media wisely, with focus, with intent, with a plan …… and with a limit on how much time it sucks up. While we are on this topic, spend less time on your computer.

Spend more time on the oldest social networking tool we have – the telephone.

Yes, I know, seriously old-school. Yet it is a fact that recruiting is still about influencing, connecting, persuading, negotiating, listening, selling and closing. And if you think email or social media can do those things better than face-to-face or telephone contact…you are… how shall I word this? Ah yes! Dumb as mud.

Focus on $ productive activities.

There are so many distractions these days. So easy for a recruiter to ‘be busy’. On social media. On research. On admin. Your goal for 2012 is to spend as many hours as possible on dollar-productive activities. And those are the activities that lead to an invoice. And typically they are the ‘contact’ activities. Talking to, and meeting, with talent. Talking to, and meeting, clients and prospects. They are the money-moments. Again don’t fool yourself. A ‘busy day’ without lots of these activities, is not a dollar-day.

Increase innovation and time on talent acquisition.

Remember, not everyone is looking for a job, but everyone is available to change jobs. 2012 is the year for you to actually do something about tapping into the passive 90%. The future of recruitment is that everyone is a candidate -  all the time. And it is up to us to convert them into active candidates, not wait for them to come to us.

Focus only on things you have control over.

I am sick of hearing and talking about the shaky economy, fickle clients, the situation in Europe, the stock market gyrations, elections in the US, the talent shortage, what the Chinese may do with the currency. I mean seriously, can YOU do anything about those things? Of course not, so don’t waste your energy and denude your motivation with this stuff. Focus on what you can impact and control.

And mostly, those are the things I have outlined in this blog.

Wishing you all a fantastic 2012.

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Stress at work is dangerous. Seriously. I believe it leads to medical issues, and it certainly will harm your relationships and overall quality of life.

And that is bad for us recruiters because we do one of the toughest jobs around. The ‘all or nothing’ nature of what we do is designed to induce stress, it seems.

Over the years I have seen recruiters reduced to highly destructive and antisocial behavior as a result of the stress they feel, as they fight to achieve targets, deal with major disappointments, and cope with rude clients and ungrateful candidates.

Drinking too much. Drug abuse. Anger directed at colleagues. Wild mood swings. Dishonest dealings. Depression. Rapid weight gain or loss.

All unfortunate. All harmful.

But what can you do about it? Pressure and stress is part of what we do. It’s not going to go away. The reality is we need to learn to cope. Have some releases that ease the pressure and redress the balance.

Here are a few things I recommend, when it comes to battling the stress tsunami.

• Have a good cry. Seriously. Or, once the phone is put down, let off some steam. As long as it’s not directed at a colleague. As long as it’s quick. As long as you bounce back fast, it’s OK! In fact, given our job, it would be weird not to melt down occasionally. I was not much of a crier myself, but when things went seriously wrong it was not unknown for me to let slip a few choice expletives, punch the desk, bang my head on the wall. It’s OK. Let it go. You will feel better afterward. But then… move on!
• Get perspective. Breathe. Again, I am serious. Push back from your desk. Suck in the big ones. Deliberately and consciously shift your thinking. Dump the negatives. ‘It will go well’, not ‘it’s all going down the gurgler’. I believe in PMA (Positive Mental Attitude). And I also believe that we can control how we react to situations. Jump off the stress treadmill. Take a chill-pill. Recalibrate your attitude. Whatever crappy thing just happened, it’s not that serious.
• Recognise the warning signs. This is simple, but big. If stress is building and you can see it’s getting worse, sometimes discretion is the greater part of valour. Take evasive action. Avoid that irritating client call. Stop making sales calls for an hour where you are getting nowhere with rude clients, and call 10 of your best talent instead. They will be pleased to hear from you and that will cheer you up right there! Leave the office early. You can make it up tomorrow. Call someone who will cheer you up.
• Set an achievable goal. One you can get, and that will make you feel good. This is key. A massive sea of work is piling up all around you. You can see no way you can get it done. Every call you take seems to pile more and more on you. The ‘to do’ list is getting ever longer.  So here is the trick. Cross everything on the ‘to do’ list out, except the top 3 big, hairy important things that must get done. Forget the rest. You were not going to get to them anyway, were you? Scratch them out and get the big 3 to 5 things done. Then go home. Successful.
• Sweat a little. This is my most personal tip. I reckon exercise reduces stress exponentially. In fact I have month’s gym session in my diary ahead of time – 3 or 4 a week – and I don’t change them for anybody (unless my wife tells me to. Obviously.). And I go in the middle of the day. Just around the corner from my office. It suits me because I work long hours and it does not really matter when I take the break, as long as I take it. For you it might be different, but if you feel the stress building, don’t hit the grog or buy that burger to give you the comfort you crave. Run, gym, bike or even just a swift walk. For me it’s a lifesaver. Someone even told me that if they have a difficult meeting with me, they try to arrange it after my gym session, because, inevitably, I am ‘much calmer’.

Being a recruiter means stress. It never fully goes away no matter how good you are. You have to manage it. Because if we can manage the pressure, being a recruiter rocks! Hope these tips help you!

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Most people who become recruiters do not last. There are many reasons for that. Poor hiring decisions and inadequate training being high on the list.

But there is another key reason why so few people actually last in the hurly-burly world of agency recruiting.

It’s a frigging hard job!

So I know that sometimes you question why you do it. There are times you hate what you do. There are days you go home feeling deflated, worn-out and frankly, useless.

The world is littered with ‘ex-recruiters’, burnt out, scarred and resentful about their all-too-short recruiting career.

Seriously, the guy who cut my hair last week told me he had ‘been a recruiter once’.

It’s true too that being a recruiter can be the greatest job of all, but even so, to survive you have to know the pitfalls, prepare for them, minimise their impact where you can, and push through the inevitable challenges this job will throw you.

• Recruiting is uniquely tough because it’s the only job that I know where what you are selling can turn around and say ‘no’. Think about it. I sell you my car. You agree to buy the car. I agree to sell the car. We agree a price. The car does not then jump up and say “Hey you know what, I am not going to go with this new guy”. Don’t laugh. That happens to recruiters every day. We do everything right. Take a great job spec. Impress our client. Recruit great talent. Make the match. Manage the process. Architect a fitting deal for all parties. Secure a great offer. Get everything agreed and at the last minute – our product – the candidate – says, “ Nah, I changed my mind, I will stay where I am”. And that is it. All over red rover!

• Recruiting is a killer because for us, it is all or nothing. Sure, a tiny percentage of our work is retained, but mostly recruiting is first prize or nothing. Our business is not like the Olympics where you can pick up a respectable silver or bronze for competing well. For us it’s gold…or its donut! We do all the work, spend huge amounts of time and expertise, and manage the process with skill and diligence. But if our 5 great candidates get pipped by a late runner from another recruiter, or an internal candidate, then it is big fat zero for us. That’s tough. Hard to take. Especially when it happens often. And it does.

• Recruiting grinds you down because you do so much work you don’t get paid for. When you hear the words “I am feeling burnt out” from a recruiter, what that actually means is “I just can’t stand doing so much work for so little return”. Contingent recruiters are lucky to fill one job out of 5 they take, and place one candidate out of 10 they meet. And combined with the ‘all or nothing’ fee model most work on, it means lots and lots of hours for which we don’t get paid, and equally importantly see no tangible success. And success, in the form of happy clients and happy talent, is the bedrock upon which our self-esteem is built. And once that crumbles, it is the beginning of the end.

So what to do?

• Firstly recognise that if you are going to be a recruiter, these challenges come with the job. In the memorable words of my Under 16 rugby coach, ‘Toughen the f*** up’ and prepare yourself for plenty of disappointment.

• Secondly, work hard to mitigate the risk of these things happening to you. Hone your recruitment skills, your talent management skills, and your job qualification ability. Build trusted advisor relationships and work to get exclusivity on orders to increase your job-fill ratios. Great recruiters, who move from transacting to consulting, start to win more than they lose.

• Finally,  never forget that if you choose to be a recruiter, you have made a Faustian bargain. You have chosen a career fraught with pitfalls and sometimes it feels like a living hell, But do it right, and the fun and money we need for a great job is within our grasp, because being a recruiter can really rock too!

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If you have plans to be a great recruiter, please, remember this and never forget it.

Filling a job does not start with finding good candidates for a particular job order. It starts with the quality with which you take the job order in the first place. It does not matter if you take the brief face to face (and you should, if at all possible), or over the phone. Filling the order starts with how well you qualify that order.

You have to make sure, at the very get-go, that the order you are so excited about, is in fact, fillable! Sound crazy? I don’t think so. My assessment is that most contingent recruitment firms fill somewhere around 25% of the permanent jobs they take. And they only achieve a 25% success rate if they are both very good and very lucky! Everyone denies that of course, but usually that’s because we don’t measure it, or because we are in big-time denial about the reality of our fill ratios.

What this means is that we end up spinning our wheels on 75 % of the permanent orders we take on. It is madness, and I have written extensively on selling exclusivity in the past and more recently too.

Now it is true that you will be hard-pressed to fill 100% of your job orders in a contingent market. However, you will increase your hit rate exponentially if you learn to qualify your job orders. The key to this is to take charge of the order-taking phase and to act and believe as though you are the expert.

Another day, another blog, maybe, I will lay out how to quality a job order from beginning to end. But here let me share two golden question you must ask every single time you take a job order. It’s non-negotiable. Without asking these questions you are taking on the order ‘blind’. It is in fact inconceivable to me how any recruiter would expend one second of time on filling an order for a client, if they had not asked these two questions, and drilled down on the answers too.

These questions are designed to assist you ‘triage’ your job taking. Is this brief urgent?  How sincere is your client about actually making a hire? In other words, if you put a suitably qualified candidate in front of your client, would they offer them a job? Indeed, will they actually ever even interview them?

Basic you say? Hilarious, I say! Or maybe tragic is more accurate.

Every day I see even experienced recruiters taking on orders they will never fill. Unqualified orders.

If you want to put the title ‘Recruitment Consultant’, or anything vaguely similar on your business card, ask this;

Question #1: “Ms Client, how long have you been trying to fill this particular role and what steps have you taken so far to fill the position?”

Question #2: “Ms Client, if I found the perfect candidate this afternoon, could we get an offer by tomorrow morning?”

The answers to these questions will unlock a treasure trove of information for you. Yes they will provoke more questions and more answers, but once it’s been worked through you will know whether this job is real, whether this client is able to hire and committed to hire, and you will know the urgency of the need.

There are a myriad of variations in the answers you will get, but largely it plays out as follows:

In answer to Question #1, how long has the role been open and what has been done to fill it, you will hear that it’s been open 6 months, that it’s been offered 3 times, that it’s never been offered, that it’s with six other recruiters, that it has been advertised on 12 job boards, that no one has ever been interviewed for the role, that the search criteria have changed 4 times because the hiring manager can’t make up his mind on what he is looking for.  You will dig, you will ask more questions, but you will slowly uncover if the job is real and if it is, what has to change to make sure it will be filled.

Or, in answer to Question #1 you might just get the dream response, which is “the current incumbent resigned last night and I am desperate to get a replacement, and so I called you”. That is a beautiful sound. It is the sound of a client in pain, and a client in pain is a very good thing. Because we can ease that pain

When it comes to Question # 2 you are not really looking to have the job filled by tomorrow. You are assessing the clients’ seriousness. A typical response to this could be “Oh no we can’t give an answer by tomorrow because we are still assessing internal candidates”, or “Oh, we can’t move that fast because the CEO has not signed off on this hire as yet” or any number of other responses that tell you quite clearly: Do not work on this brief – because it is not real.

Remember, you are not a lackey to you clients’ whim. You are not in servitude, required to supply candidates on demand for your client to peruse eventually, if he feels like it, one day, maybe…

You are a professional recruiter and your time has value. If you are not working on a retainer (and your clients will not jerk you around if you are), you need to drill down on these 2 questions in depth, every time. Even then, that is only stage one of qualifying the order.

But please, at the very least, do that.

What do you say to a friend who wants your ‘real’ opinion on a matter of some sensitivity? You know, “Do you think I should marry him?” or showing off a new pair of jeans, “Does my butt look big in this?”

It’s a tricky dilemma. You don’t want to rock the boat. You certainly don’t want to hurt your friends’ feelings.  But on the other hand, being honest, while painful, is almost certainly in their best interests.

To answer these questions well, it takes courage. It takes discretion. It takes a lot of trust between two people.

And guess what?

That is exactly the relationship a good recruiter has with clients and candidates.

Would you tell your client that he is not securing the best candidates because the interview process is too long and too demeaning for the talent? Can you find a way to coach your client on her own interview technique, which is turning candidates away?  Are you a  ‘trusted advisor’? A status that enables you to tell your client that their employer brand is weak, and that there are things they need to do to improve their image in the employer market place?

And do you have the courage to tell your candidate that “their butt looks big” as well?

Do you counsel your candidates on their interpersonal style? Can you advise your candidates to talk less in interviews, to stop using slang, to adjust their interview attire, and maybe (God forbid, but it has to happen sometimes) to use more deodorant?

Do you look your candidate in the eye and calmly explain why their salary aspirations are too high?  That they are not ready to manage staff? That they need more communications polish before they can assume a client-facing role?

This is the recruiting equivalent of telling your friend her butt looks huge in those jeans and she had best stop wearing them. Or telling your best mate that his new mullet haircut is an embarrassment to men everywhere.

It has to be done. You are not a friend if you don’t. And as a recruiter you are not a  ‘consultant ‘ if you don’t.

It takes courage and careful communication.

But mostly it means you have built up trust with that client or candidate.

They wont necessarily like what you say, but they will deeply value the fact that you could tell them.

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I have written before on the farcical chaos that results when recruiting clients engage multiple recruiters to work on the same job order. And I have offered advice on how a recruiter should sell exclusivity to clients to ensure this does not happen.

But as the market improves, maybe we need to focus on a key component of selling exclusivity. And that is a clear understanding of why working with one, quality recruiter on a specific brief is actually in the clients’ best interests. Well here are 15 very good reasons for starters.

• The Client is getting the Recruiter’s full commitment to filling their vacant role. Let’s not beat around the bush here. A client may think they get more effort from a recruiter when the role is in competition, but what really happens is a short burst of activity from the recruiter, and then our interest wanes as we realise the client is not committed, and we go and put our energy into clients who will work with us as partners.
• The responsibility for success is now shifted to the Recruiter. If the job is given to one recruiter, retained or exclusive, we own the problem. The client can focus on whatever it is they do for a living.
• The client is taking the focus off speed and back on quality. Why would you want your crucial hiring decision based on who can get candidates to you first? Would you hire a brain surgeon because they could do the job fastest? A house painter? A hairdresser?  ‘Exclusivity’ means the recruiter has time to do thorough work.
• Exclusivity allows the Recruiter to bring all their resources to bear in the talent search. Not just a quick data-base search. But a thorough, detailed talent search including networks, communities and social media.
• Working exclusively usually means there is time for the Recruiter to take a detailed job order. The better the order, the better the match.
• There is time for the Recruiter to do a full and comprehensive database search. The Client gets the best, not the best we saw that week.
• The Recruiter has time to comb networks, online resources, social media networks and tap in to the passive talent market.
• If the Recruiter is a global business like Firebrand, exclusivity allows time to access Talent through our global reach.
• Exclusivity means more time to do thorough screening, saving the clients time and frustration.
• Time allows thorough Talent interviews, including full assessment of skills, experience and attitude.
• The Recruiter will be able to fully qualify the Talent in terms of start date and salary, once again saving the client much time and frustration.
• The Client will save time by dealing with one competent recruiter. No multiple agency briefings and multiple contacts to deal with.
• The Clients’ confidentiality is preserved as the role is not being touted around town by  five or six recruiters, each speaking to 9 or 10 candidates about the role.
• Clients brand and image is improved by using one recruiter, because their job is not devalued in the eyes of talent, who will be suspicious if the job is represented by multiple recruiters.
• Exclusivity means you will not have the issue of recruiters referring the same Talent to the same client – which can be very sordid indeed.

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They call it ‘social media’ or ‘social networking’, and some might quibble at the word ‘social’ because a lot of it can be done alone, from the confines of a darkened room.

And most recruiters don’t have the faintest clue how to get the best out of the digital social explosion. A cursory glance will show you recruiters using Twitter as a job board, personal Facebook pages to connect with clients, and LinkedIn as a place to share banter and weekend war stories. All wrong.

So where to begin to understand how to interact on these various platforms? Are they different in terms of what you share and how you ‘speak’?

Well, ‘yes’, is the answer as far as I can see. And seeing that we call this stuff ‘social’ media, lets try (tongue firmly in cheek) to relate digital social to social IRL (In Real Life, of course!)

Facebook is like a pub: It’s an informal place where people get together with old friends, shoot the breeze, tell risqué jokes, and meet people they have never spoken to before. There are few rules and people certainly tend to misbehave there at times, often feeling embarrassed later about what they have said, shown or done! But real friendships can start there, and what’s more business can be done over a beer in the Facebook pub, so it’s not to be ignored.

Twitter is like a cocktail party: There is lots going on, and it’s very high energy. Many conversations are happening at once. Lots of people are talking and far fewer are listening. People drop in and out of conversations and if you like a conversation you might share it with another group. Sure you get the odd twitter cocktail party guest who behaves inappropriately, but mostly it’s pretty cordial, with more manners, and better language, than at the Facebook Pub.

LinkedIn is like a Tradeshow or a corporate conference: It’s business-like. People are there to work, learn and connect with like-minded business people. Mostly everyone is aware they are ‘on show’, and put their best foot forward. At the “Conference” you watch your language, dress up a little.

YouTube is like Times Square on New Years Eve or the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras: Pretty much anything goes! People will let their hair down and willingly make a fool of themselves, but no one really cares… until they meet you at the LinkedIn Conference, maybe.

A blog is like Speakers Corner in Hyde Park in London: You can stand on your soapbox and say pretty much whatever you like. But your audience is fickle and will drift in and out, and judge you very quickly to be an interesting expert on a niche subject or a quack to be jeered or ignored. But don’t ignore it because lucid orators on street corners spark ideas!

MySpace is like Woodstock: The young and the crazy populated it, but it’s a fading memory for most.

I guess the point is this. Buttoned-down corporate lawyers for example go to the pub and let it all hang out at the Mardi Gras. But they also attend corporate conferences and cocktail parties and they would never get confused about how to dress or behave at each event.

That’s social media. Content and context are everything.

This article was partially inspired by a presentation on Social Media by Rachel Gould, Social Media Manager, Lander Associates. Thanks Rachel!

It’s quite a few years since I worked a desk as a recruiter. But I did, for many years. And I was a pretty good recruiter too. Not great mind you. Just good enough to have a lot of fun, and make a bit of money.

At Firebrand we have hired 25 new recruiters in the past 6 months, so I am spending a lot of time training and coaching. As a result I am telling a lot of stories from my time on the desk. And it reminded me that although I billed a fair bit in my youth, I also made some monumental stuff-ups. And I don’t mean the odd lapse of judgment. I mean gargantuan mistakes. Colossal gaffes that make me cringe to this very day.

A while ago, I wrote a blog about my biggest blunders as a manager of recruiters.  But they are mostly forgivable errors, as managing people is such a nuanced endeavor. But today I hope to to exorcise my demons by sharing what is probably the worst of several almighty balls-ups I made as a recruiter.

It was in London in the early 1980s, and the market was starting to boom after a severe recession. I was placing accountants from a pokey office behind Oxford Circus, and frankly the whole industry was a bit of a circus in those days. Don’t get me wrong. It was a real, thriving industry. But it was largely unregulated. It was tough. It was fast. It was brutal actually, but it was exhilarating too.

I loved the cut and thrust of it. We interviewed people at our desks. We had job orders circulated from office to office by motorbike to get the information around the business faster. That’s right. No email and no fax. A good recruiter often placed three or four people a week. In those days, the process of recruitment was undefined, and certainly at the fast end of the market, you simply referred candidates to jobs you thought would suit them, based on the interview you had conducted with them.

Looking back I am amazed that at the time it was routine to refer candidates to roles without their specific permission on that role or that client. It was all too fast. Yes, that was the standard practice in accounting recruitment, London circa 1982.

As a result, we often placed people on the day they came in to see us. In fact that was our preferred modus operandi, as many clients would interview candidates based on our ‘telephone sell’ of their background. Often a resume was not needed at all!

But, often, the only way to secure an interview for our candidates was to send the client ‘CVs’ as we called them at that time. And it was a bun-fight to get your candidates included on the ‘shortlist’. It was truly a case of the quick and the dead, because you were competing against many other recruitment firms of course, but you were also in earnest competition to get CVs to the client before other offices of your company, and also before colleagues in your own office! (Did I mention the environment was competitive?).

But all this is no excuse for what I did. There is no easy way to say this, so here goes …..

I sent the resume of a qualified accountant, a delightful young woman, to her own employer!

There it is. I did the unthinkable. I was moving so fast, that I quickly matched a job description with a candidate and put the two together.

And it was a good match too. It was HER job!

Did I realise my blunder? No. I found out by the client calling me. “Did you send me the resume of Mary Candidate? “ he said in a quiet monotone. “Oh yes sir, I certainly did” I gushed, still unaware of the horror about to unfold. “ Well this is just to inform you that I am her boss and until now I was unaware she was looking for a new job. Thank you for this information.”

“Click”

The horror. The shame. The guilt.

I phoned her. Many times. She never took my calls. Never called back. In fact I have never spoken to her again.

And to be honest I don’t know what happened to her or what the consequences for her were. Labour law was not nearly as supportive of the employee in those days, and she could easily have lost her job. At the very least, I put her in an awful position.

But in the long run the whole diabolical episode did me a lot of good. For a start, it brought me down a peg or two. Made me realise that there was a major flaw in the way we were doing things. (I was only in my early 20s and we were being told, ‘This is how it’s done’.)

It also taught me the importance of care and process, and it reminded me of our duty to candidates and how attention to detail counts.

I never made a mistake like that again.

How about you? What is your biggest recruiting stuff-up? Your darkest recruiting hour?

Come on, please tell us. Tell us your tale in the comments section below. The secret you never wanted to share.

You will feel so much better!

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For regular, fresh recruiting brain-food, please subscribe to ‘The Savage Truth’

I love being a recruiter.

Seriously, I think it’s the best job in the world.

Yet 80% of people who enter this industry, fail in the first 2 years, leave, and are never sighted again.

And it’s true, it is tough being a recruiter. And I believe in the modern era it’s getting even harder. During the downturn it got even worse. We all worked harder and harder, and earned less and less.

On top of that, our customers seem to resent us more than ever, as can be seen in my recent blog, ‘God I hate recruiters’.

Ironically there is a fate worse than being amongst the 80% of recruiters who fail. Yes, being an average, mediocre, ploddy recruiter who survives is real purgatory. Why? Because this job is too hard, has too many disappointments, not to be great at it. You have to be a great recruiter to reap the rewards that make it all worthwhile.

So for the top 5%, the cream, recruiting is the coolest job in the world.

Here’s why:

• Recruiting is a win/win/win. Unlike most commercial transactions, recruiting is not a win/lose scenario. If I sell you a car I aim for the highest price, you push for the lowest. One of us will feel we ‘won’, the other a bit despondent that we ‘lost’.  But in the perfect recruitment scenario everybody wins. Happy client, happy candidate, happy you. This is not as trivial as it seems. There is something intensely rewarding about doing a job where everyone is grateful, everyone is excited with the outcome… and then you get paid as well.
• You create great outcomes. Maybe the coolest thing about being a recruiter is that this is a job where you actually make good things happen. The candidate is reluctant to go on an interview, but through your influencing skills they reluctantly go along, do fantastically well, love the job, and get hired! The client won’t see your top talent because of something they spotted in the resume, but you persist, explaining the person is better than the paper, the client relents and your talent gets the job, gets promoted and in time becomes your client!  For me, when I recruited, this was the real buzz. Making things happen. Controlling the process. I would crack open a beer on Friday and reflect. That would NOT have happened if I had not seen the opportunity and influenced the outcome. Beyond cool.
• And of course that leads us to another reason why recruiting rocks. What we do actually matters. I mean it really matters. Recruiters get a horrific rap sometimes, and often it’s deserved but hey, at the end of the day, we find people jobs! And that’s a good thing right? Something to be proud of. It makes an impact. We change people’s lives. We solve companies staffing issues. We help people further their career ambitions. Fantastic!
• One of the beautiful things about our business is that it is so measurable. This does not suit everybody I know, but in recruiting there is nowhere to hide, and I like that. If you have the right temperament, you will thrive in this competitive environment, love the fact that you can measure yourself against your competitors and colleagues, and revel in the transparency of fee-tables and pay-by-results. Truly in our business, you eat what you kill.
• You can own your market. If you have longevity, if you maintain integrity, if you deliver service and outcomes that your customers want… you can elevate yourself to a true trusted advisor, and then recruitment becomes a beautiful, beautiful thing.  All your work is exclusive, all your candidates come via referrals and commendations, clients treat you with respect, seek your advice, bring you into the tent . You actually ‘own’ your patch and that is a wonderful place to be!

Yes it’s true. Recruiting Rocks. When it all boils down, what all of us want from a great job is just two things. Fun & Money. And if you’re a great recruiter you’ll get lots of both. The fun of winning, the fun of finding people jobs, the fun of working in a job that actually counts. And money? I don’t mean how much you earn, although of course that important. I mean working in a job where you get a great return on your efforts. That is where it is at!

So if you are having a down day. Never forget. Fun and money.

Recruitment rocks!

For regular recruiting brain food, please subscribe to The Savage Truth.