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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This post is for anyone who manages people, or who hopes to in the future. It will probably draw some flak too, but that’s because I don’t really believe in generational differences. I think it has been largely hyped and exaggerated. I have plenty of employees at Firebrand who fit into the so-called ‘Gen Y’ age bracket. And I don’t see the negative characteristics often ascribed to this ‘generation’. Mostly, I see hard working, highly focused individuals who want to do well, have fun and make a difference. And many of them have been with us years, defying the job-hopping Gen Y stereotypes.

Often, too much talk of how to ‘manage the generations’ leads to skipping over some of the difficult things that need to be done when managing people. And I reckon those things need to be done no matter who you are dealing with.

One of the ways I define great leadership is that the leader actually cares. Bureaucrats do not make leaders. Administrators don’t make leaders either. But before we go any further on the subject of “caring” for our people, a key word of warning on this.

Unfortunately there is too much hype nowadays about the idea that leaders must show concern for their teams. Apparently you have to give a figurative cuddle of support to ‘Gen Y’ staff on the hour or they will resign and go Llama farming in Peru. Codswallop. You cannot fake the fact that you care about the people in the business. There is nothing worse than a manager returning from the latest interpersonal skills training program with “concern” for others beaming from every orifice. It’s not real and everyone knows it’s not real.

Real leaders don’t need training programmes to convince their staff they care. What’s more, real leaders empathise with the people they lead. By this I mean the leader knows what a recruiter does, knows how hard it is and knows the inevitable peaks and troughs.

I have always found it key to any success I have had as a manager of recruiters, that I have worked a desk myself. I feel the recruiter’s pain to this day. I have had shocking months, offers turned down and phones slammed in my ear.  So I do understand the bruises the job will give you. I also like everyone I work with on an interpersonal level, so I really do care when someone is having a bad month or day.

But some times the empathy you need to have is of the “tough” kind.

View video on YouTube

Tough empathy means giving your consultants what they NEED not what they want.

That means often telling people things they don’t want to hear, or setting work practices and goals that at first they may not agree with, or like at all. But that’s OK because tough empathy works – and tough empathy is about what’s needed at a particular point in time, not what’s preferred by the consulting team. After all, the team may want something, or prefer something else, but they don’t after all ultimately carry the responsibility for the business, do they? You do though.

At its best, what tough empathy means, is a balance between respect for the individual and the business imperative to achieve the task at hand.

So it could mean sitting with a recruiter who is failing, but who you know can make it. It will mean putting that person on a rehabilitation plan. It means closely managing activities, imposing time management regimes, setting daily goals, and providing intense coaching. It’s confronting and scary for the consultant. It’s frankly not that much fun for the leader either. Yes it’s tough. But you are doing it because you care about their success and their future – and at a deep level they know that.

Do you see what I am saying here? The recruiter knows you are doing something difficult for you, and difficult for her, because you care about what happens to her.  And the power in that dynamic is almost immeasurable.

Some people think that to be a great leader you have to be liked by all. That could not be more untrue. People in our industry, regardless of  ‘generation’ are not looking for friends when they look to their boss. They are looking for direction, support, honesty and clarity. And even though they may not know it at first, they may be looking for the occasional dose of tough empathy too.

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We don’t mean to be tentative, do we? We want to be bold, strong and confident when dealing with clients. Yet time and again, we use words that are stumbling blocks. Our fear takes over. And we use tentative language. Words that offer the client a reason to doubt us. Phrases that reduce our credibility.

Tentative language: How do you know you’re using it? 

Do you use words like ‘normally’? The client asks you, how much do you charge? Do you start off by saying, ‘Oh, normally’. 

Disaster! Right there. The battle is lost.

You’ve stepped onto a landmine. When you say “normally”, the client knows at once that your price is negotiable. She knows you are not sure of your price. You may not even believe in your value. And hey presto – the client is in the driver’s seat. 

There are many words we all use that prevent us from being in the driver’s seat -  

’Approximately’. ‘Usually.’ ‘I feel that…’  ‘Sometimes’. ‘Our average price’.  ‘Ballpark figure’.  All of these words send an instant message to the client’s brain that you’re a bit unsure. Just a little insecure. 

The insecurity spills over.

When the client (or talent for that matter) hears insecurity in your words, they can’t but help simultaneously hear the insecurity in your work and your service.

Don’t say “Firebrand is one of the leading marketing, creative and digital search companies in the world”. You have qualified the statement by prefacing it with “one of the”. Say “Firebrand IS the leading marketing, creative and digital search company in the world”.

When a recruiter says to a client “ For this job, we charge $20,000 and we deliver an outcome in two weeks or less”, your client is instantly impressed. The client didn’t hear tentativeness in your price or your ability.

Talent are sensitive to tentativeness too. Don’t say, “this job might have some of the things you are looking for in a new role”, or “this job is probably worth looking at”. Why would that compel me to go to see that client? Say, “This is an exceptional company with a superb client list and an excellent culture. What’s more it fits all the criteria you outlined for a job move, including more client-facing time and the international travel you are looking for “ (This is an example of course. What you say has to be true!)

Specifics impress. Remember, it’s not just you that’s having the uncertainty in the sales situation. The client is walking in unknown territory as well. As a client what would you prefer to hear? “The job will be advertised tomorrow, my database will be fully searched by Friday night and my research team will map the market in a week, and I will have a shortlist in two weeks or less” or “We’ll get down to it and get the job done soon.”

As a Talent would you rather hear “You have great skills and I am going to market your resume to clients A, B and C by Tuesday.” or  “I will do my best to get you interviews with suitable companies.”?

Think about your words. Think about your voice tone. It can make all the difference. One thing is certain. Stop using tentative language. It isn’t doing you any good.

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I find managing a business really difficult. Seldom a week goes by that I don’t think I could have done something better. And of course as a leader, communicating the vision, communicating change, communicating expectations – these are subtle skills, which I don’t think any of us truly master.

However, developing these skills is fundamental to our success. Particularly now, where so many employees have so much choice, engaging people with the company’s goals is, in my view, perhaps the leader’s primary role.

View video on YouTube

You will never be accused of over-communicating. No one is going to resign because you share too much information; be disaffected because you tell them what they are doing well, and how they can get even better.  It’s better to err on the side of sharing the vision and the values too often, than too little. I am forever getting surprised when people tell me they have “never heard that before”, when in my mind it’s been said a thousand times.

Nothing scientific here. Just 10 golden rules I have learned over many years of trial and error.

1. Communicate early and often. Don’t wait till people start to make things up because of a lack of information. Don’t communicate only once and think people will “get it”. They almost certainly won’t. Repeat the message in different ways and at different times.
2. Tell them everything or tell them nothing. I have learned that telling people half the story is dangerous. They will invent the missing information. If you are not ready to tell the full story, rather say nothing. Of course in most situations is better to tell it all, early.
3. Empathise before you communicate. “I understand that cutting the advertising budget is going to make it harder for you to achieve your personal goals in some respects, but it’s not working so we want to spend the money smarter.”
4. Deliver on commitments that you communicate or do not make those commitments. This is likely to be your most costly mistake. Communicating change or promises that you don’t follow-up on. We all get enthusiastic and we want to share positive news, but it is best to remain silent unless you know you can follow through. Not delivering kills credibility as a leader and does irreparable damage to the trust.
5. Use informal and formal channels. Sure, share company news via emails and newsletters, but also take the time to sit at the desk of a key person, or over drinks, or on the way back from a client visit. This is where you will get the questions and be able to really cut through any confusion.
6. Celebrate wins and tell success stories. Small and frequent. Success builds belief. Share the news of Mary’s biggest placement, Fred’s first retained order, our biggest placement ever, a key new client won. People want to work with winners and love to hear positive war stories. They are happening every day. Communicate them!
7. Share confidential information regularly. You have to make this call, but I believe it builds trust and buy-in. The company results, margins, client revenues.  Yes it’s sensitive stuff, but mostly I find people will be mature and will value being brought into the inner circle.
8. Where possible speak, don’t email. It’s a thousand times better and more effective. You can always follow up with an email if you just can’t stand not sending one (see here for my views on technology and communicating).
9. Plan and prepare for delivering tricky news. If you have something distasteful to communicate, for example your company is going to have to close a branch office, predict the questions you are likely to get or people are likely to think. Prepare honest, carefully crafted answers. Be careful of the language you use. For example “we have decided not to replace the consultant who left the perm desk because we see the perm market plateauing for a while and we think the people we have now are fully capable of servicing our current client workload”. That’s a lot better than “We are not replacing her because the perm market is so bad and will probably tank even further soon, so we think it is dangerous to hire someone else because none of you will have enough to do”.
10. Tell the right people the right things. This is key. Don’t have ‘communications favourites’ where you share news first with a selected few. It creates distrust and lack of loyalty. And never talk to one recruiter about the mistakes or weaknesses of another.

View video on YouTube

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Running a great recruitment business is difficult. The competition, the compliance, the cash flow issues and most of all, the people complexity creates an ideal environment to screw up.

Here are 10 of my biggest blunders, some of which I have made several times. I offer them up as a guide on what NOT to do when running a recruitment company.

1. Focusing too heavily on consultant activity levels. Slavishly counting activities, measuring ratios, chastising shortfalls… at the expense of ensuring the quality of those activities was high and consistent. Lots of activity, done badly, will actually send your business backwards, and focusing on activity for activity sake can be tremendously demoralising for the team, and distracting for the leadership.
2. Focusing too little on activity levels of consultants.  This is the flip side of the same coin and it’s just as big a blunder.  Allowing consultants to “free wheel” appearing busy by doing lots of ‘stuff’ without ensuring clarity and focus about what their key activities must be. Letting consultants spend 90 minutes in an interview with a junior person because “they want to get it right” and agonising for hours over the wording on a resume are great examples. Quality is important, but you also have to churn through a lot of the key actions that drive making the match. It’s a management task to keep that on track.
3. Allowing consultants full autonomy over which clients and which jobs they choose to work on was a mistake. Most recruiters are somewhat “tarty” by inclination, trying to work with everyone on everything. Specialisation is key, working with clients who will partner with us is key, gaining exclusivity and working on fully qualified briefs is fundamental, as is working with people who pay our bills. Not prioritising our WIP has cost me plenty, time and time again.
4. Hiring potential consultants because they had a great academic background and fantastic careers in a previous job, which was not recruitment, but in a field we specialise in. I have learned that when hiring recruiters we need to focus more on intrinsic attributes that drive success in recruitment, such as competitiveness, empathy, resilience, listening skills, passion, integrity and work ethic.
5. Opening offices in remote places without strong, committed, proven, loyal local management. Everything depends on leadership and it gets more crucial with every kilometre the remote business is away from HQ.
6. Retaining mediocre people (who may be very nice people) in the hope they will miraculously become superstars despite mounting evidence that they will always be underperformers. This is a massive opportunity cost and I make this mistake even now.
7. Hiring managers and recruiters on massive base salaries on the back of “impressive” track records (which are often not what they seem) or promises of huge performance. I learned that you must always link high earning with high performance. The big money comes after the big delivery, not before.
8. Allowing managers of smallish teams (2 – 8 people) to evolve into non-billing managers. This is a massive mistake.  We need “player/managers,” people who bill, rain-make, business develop and also manage the team. I have allowed managers to become backroom crunchers of numbers and process managers, and that’s not where the value of a leader lies, nor can you secure any leverage out of that kind of role.
9. Assuming that a good recruiter will make a good manager. They are entirely different skill sets. Promoting your highest billing recruiter to Team Leader because she wants a “career” can destroy her progress, dismantle her billings, and disintegrate the team.
10. Listing my own company Recruitment Solutions in 1998. It was too small a business really to be floated. Profit of only $4M.  The IPO was a financial success, but it was not the right thing for the business. It cost a lot to be listed, we lost control to non-executive directors and you have to answer to shareholders and fund managers. Watching share price means you spend less time on the important things like customers and staff. I am immensity proud of Recruitment Solutions. It was stand out business and produced literally scores of people who now own their own successful business. But we should not have gone public.

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Recently I was honoured to present a keynote address to the RCSA National Conference in Hobart.

In that speech I laid out 10 trends that I believe will impact the recruiting profession and which we need to factor into our strategies and business planning.

1. Expectations of clients are rising and will continue to rise. Clients want insights, not just résumés. They want better service. They want specialist level consulting advice. And they want it faster and globally.
2. Clients and talent are savvier, more discerning, and more sensitive to quality. Right now, publicly listed recruiters are reporting rising revenues and profits. But at the same time we see increasing numbers of small recruiters going into liquidation. Big firm or smaller player, clients will not accept the second rate, the cumbersome or the old-fashioned.
3. Employers will continue to aggressively build their in-house capacity to recruit staff.  Clients will develop corporate in-house recruitment teams, build recruitment technology, enhance employer branding, and use social media. And all of these will be used to cut recruiters out of the process. It’s a major issue for our industry and we have to offer something measurably different to be seen to be providing value.
4. An increasing majority of vacant jobs will not be advertised anywhere. Forget web advertising vs. print media. More and more jobs just won’t get announced at all. Networking, social media, and skilled, specialised recruiters will fill most jobs before they ever hit the mainstream media. That has huge implications for us in the way we develop business, access talent and make the match. And also for the skill-set of our recruiting staff.
5. Talent will become smarter and wiser to the way our industry works. They will be far more discerning about the recruiter they work with. They will take charge of their job search and of their employee brand. Technology has made things so much more transparent for job seekers and the pathway for them to connect with employers is now wide open, potentially leaving third-party recruiters out in the cold. This raises massive questions around the way we engage with candidates and our entire talent acquisition strategies.
6. Reputation and Brand – of recruiters – will become our most valuable asset. And we will not be able to influence brand via traditional PR and media anymore, because social media is so viral, so transparent and so powerful, that your business can be destroyed or made by it at lightening speed. Our brands are being defined by the voices of strangers.
7. Referrals will become the primary sourcing channel for all levels of positions. Not print, not job boards – but word of mouth, reputation, networking and referral programs.
8. Customers’ loyalty will become key. And by customers I mean both clients and talent. Churn and burn will not work. We need to retain what we have, and develop it intelligently and consistently.
9. On top of all this, there will be increasing pressure on price. Clients will not pay the same for what they used to get.
10. To sum it all up, yesterday’s “delivery” market will become tomorrow’s relationship market with both clients and talent.

Yes, the staffing market may be recovering, but every day we read of recruitment companies going into liquidation. And even in the best of times, I know plenty of recruitment business owners are frustrated by how hard they work for such modest returns.

And the tendency is to blame clients, or the market or the government.

But often the real culprit is much closer to home. Profitability of a recruitment business is totally dependent on recruiter productivity. And more to the point, poor returns are usually a result of long-term acceptance of mediocre performers.

And plenty of business owners are naïve when it comes to the real cost of their staff. They talk of accepting people billing a modest multiple of their salary as being sufficient. I have often heard such statements as “Well, I only paid her $60,000 a year and she billed $70,000, so she covered her cost”. Total nonsense, that was a loss making hire, make no mistake.

What is often forgotten is the opportunity cost of having a serial under performer in your company when you could have a high performer, covering overhead and contributing to profit.

This short video above explains a quick, rough and ready way to work out what recruiters cost you – even before you pay their salary!

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Not so long ago, I ran the Sydney Half Marathon.

That’s 21.1 kilometres around the streets of Sydney. Took just over two hours for me to do it too.

But running a Half Marathon is no big deal. Even at my age, and with my drinking habits. Thousands do it regularly. In the Firebrand business we have plenty of real athletes, some of whom comfortably run full marathons!

So why tell you this? Well, running this marathon reminded me of a very important life lesson. And it’s a lesson that has huge significance for anyone who wants to be a great recruiter and make a long-term career in this industry.

The story goes like this.

I suspected I might be a little unfit, so I went for a jog around my neighborhood. Problem was that after three kilometres I had to stop as I was out of breath and felt dizzy. Bad news. I was seriously unfit! As I hobbled home, I made a rash promise to myself. It was 9 weeks until the Sydney Half Marathon, and I decided I would get fit enough to run it.

So easy to say. So hard to follow through.

But I was determined, and I started training. Gym. Road running. Running on a treadmill. It hurt. I hated every second. The gym was full of smug dudes who looked like models from Men’s Health magazine. Running the streets was cold, and friends of mine would honk and laugh as they drove past.

One week into my programme, I got home from a run and I started to waver. “This is ridiculous,” I thought. “I am too old for this rubbish,” I reasoned. “I don’t need to actually run a marathon to get fit,” I persuaded myself. “I am far too busy. I have travel coming up. There is no time to get fit for this,” I tried to convince myself.

By the time I got into my warm living room I had decided to give up the stupid half marathon idea, and I was on my way to the fridge to grab a beer (which I had given up for 9 weeks too by the way!)

Suddenly an image flashed into my mind. I was sharply reminded of a conversation I had had that very afternoon with a recruiter in our Sydney Firebrand team. This person was a good recruiter, but young and relatively inexperienced. He was going through a rough time. Two bad months. Offers turned down. He was despondent and was telling me he was not sure “if recruiting was right for him”.

During that conversation I did not hold back. I talked about persistence. I spoke of the fact that nothing worth having ever came easy. I spoke of courage and character. I told him stories about bad patches I had had, and how determination had turned things around.  I examined how building a reputation and a real business took time. I shared my opinion that often you feel as though you are getting no traction, but that all the work he was doing would pay off in time, and when it did he would feel pride and self-esteem and a sense of achievement.

And every word I told him is true. But as I hesitated at the fridge door, about to grab the beer, I realised what a hypocrite I was being. How could I tell this guy to knuckle down? To persevere in the face of something he found difficult, when I was giving up on my half-marathon after only 6 days training?

I closed the fridge and the next day hit the road again. Over the next two months I trained four or five times a week and I hated almost every session. I got a calf injury and came so close to giving up. I made so little progress for the first month that I felt I was getting less fit instead of more fit. I had to travel overseas for work and the temptation to give up training was overwhelming. But I held firm and I trained in hotel gyms and I jogged along the murky Singapore River in 90% humidity, when I could have been in the cool bar of the Marriott hotel.

School holidays came around and I took the family on a holiday to Borneo and with only two weeks to go until race itself, I resisted the hotel in-pool bar and jogged down the main street of Kota Kinabalu instead – to the utter amazement of the locals who were sensibly resting under shady trees, or sitting under fans drinking iced tea.

But that conversation with the Sydney recruiter kept coming back to me. Don’t give up. This will pay off. You have to put in the hard work before the rewards come.

One week out from the race I went to the Sydney Botanical Gardens and ran 15 kilometers. I did the distance, but it hurt so much I wanted to lie down under one of the giant Port Jackson fig trees that line Sydney Harbour. I truly came so close to giving up on the race there and then.

On the day of the race I nearly didn’t get out of bed. It was cold. I knew that 15 km had nearly floored me. How could I run 21 kilometers? At the event itself were 10,000 runners. And trust me this was no fun-run. No one was pushing prams or dressed in Superman outfits. These guys were serious!  They all looked like East African Olympians. Skinny with all the right gear. I felt well out of place and half felt like slinking off and going home.

But I did the race. And I was pumped and sped through the first 15 kms as though it was a stroll in the park. It got harder after that, but I finished, ran every step and I did it in a better time than I expected.

And it felt great.

No doubt it was worth all the hassle and the pain.

And so is it with our jobs. It’s true that often people have early success in our job. A good match, a bit of good fortune, a client or two inherited.  It can make you look good and there is nothing wrong with taking wins when they come around.

But real success? Building reputation that will last? Developing sophisticated skills? Building a portfolio of loyal clients? Evolving into a trusted advisor? Generating referrals and word of mouth talent? Generating repeat business? Securing clients who use you exclusively?

That takes time, perseverance and effort.

It takes consistent activity. It takes moral courage to do difficult things like cold calling. It takes ego strength to withstand rejection and poor results. It takes an open mind to learn new skills and work at the things you are not good at.

And slowly but surely the rewards will come.

Recruitment or running. The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.

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This is the fifth blog in my series on great coaching for managers of recruiter teams.

Previously I expanded on the importance of ‘live feedback’, ‘real life coaching’, as well as the tactic of ‘plugging in’ new recruits.

Today we look at ‘role swapping’.

Many managers I have worked with feel that if they are not doing the talking or showing the consultant how the job is done, then they are not providing valuable input.

This is not always true. From time to time, it is highly effective for the manager or coach to reverse roles, providing feedback after the event.

For example, once you have a consultant up to a certain level of competence, or even with your more experienced people, take them on a client visit with you where they lead the discussion, where they take in the job, where they do the selling and you play a secondary role.

You may be surprised how difficult this is to do! Many managers simply cannot help themselves on a client meeting and leap in to take control. I understand why, but look at the bigger picture. When is the recruiter ever going to learn if you always take control? In fact you are setting that person up for disaster because the first time they actually get to run a client meeting, they really will be on their own. i.e. when you are not there.

So sure, be ready to leap in if it goes totally off the rails, but otherwise let the recruiter run it.

Then afterwards in the cab back to the office, or in a coffee shop, do a full, immediate de-brief, pointing out missed opportunities or where things could be handled differently.

The same role swapping should be applied to interviewing candidates. Your consultant interviews, you observe and feedback afterwards.

The most powerful coaching you will ever do.