My post-COVID recruiting dream
As an industry, and as individuals, we have never had a better chance to change what we don’t like.
To slaughter sacred cows. Smash our outdated, self- inhibiting paradigms.
To configure our futures.
Who is going to stop us? Who is even looking?
The most significant waste of all will be to come back to a recruiting world, post – COVID, and do exactly what you have always done before. What a crime that would be. What a missed opportunity.
We had come to accept a dysfunctional agency recruitment model. Many of us were chasing revenue over profit. All about volume instead of quality. Spray. Pray. Another transactional spamming day.
Price-cutting and speed were seen as legitimate market differentiators (FFS!)
And sad to say, plenty of people who called themselves ‘recruiters’, are little more than keyword-matching, resume-flicking, in-box spamming, transactional hacks.
It’s a harsh truth, but I am not trying to be your friend. I am trying to change the world
The recruitment world for a start, anyway.
It is bizarre that our industry accepts contingent job orders in competition. No other industry works this way.
It’s bizarre that highly skilled professional are ok with working incredibly hard and providing exceptional value, and only getting paid for 20% of the work that they do
So, my post-COVID dream is that we shift—big time.
We dump our transactional ethos.
Every recruiter in the world only agrees to work a job order if they have that order exclusively. A retainer would be nice, but frankly, that’s not the issue.
A relationship which is based on mutual commitment is the issue.
Because if you are recruiter worth your salt, and you have jobs exclusively, and you took consultative, qualified job-orders, and you knew your candidate market, you would fill 9 out of 10 of them
That’s right. Get paid for 90% of the work you do. Like my dream so far?
Think of the benefits. To everyone!
Better client service.
Much better candidate service.
Better quality recruitment consulting.
And here is the irony. An irony that so many fee-cutting, resume-racers don’t get.
If every job were given to recruiters exclusively, we could halve our fees, and we would triple our profits
Easily. More, in fact.
Because we only fill one out of five orders on average, and one out of three in a good case.
My dream is probably precisely that. But the fact that you can configure your own future is not.
Commit to learning how to sell exclusivity and deliver on it.
I have written heaps on this, and there are videos too.
Work fewer jobs. But better-qualified jobs.
Work with fewer clients. But more committed clients.
See fewer candidates. But look after them better.
Promise your customers more. And deliver on it.
Raise the entire ethos of what we do.
Get paid more often.
See your career and earnings grow, and your mental health improve.
See more of your kids. Play more sport. Take up that hobby you talk so much about, but never actually do.
That’s my post-COVID dream.
In a small way, I have started to achieve this in my work. It’s no big deal because I have a lot of things in my favour. More choices than most. Decades to set it up. So, this is not a boast. I know I am fortunate. It’s an aspiration. For you
My mantra in my business is this. (and it has not always been this way!)
I only work with people I like. On projects I believe in. For a return worth having.
(And that’s not always a financial return. Sometimes the dividend is just fun. Or seeing someone you like succeed. What a luxury to spend time on projects like that!)
I have never been happier in 40 years on the tools.
Make it your reality.
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I am always sharing recruiting brainfood there.
(Some of it even quite good)
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- Posted by Greg Savage
- On July 7, 2020
- 7 Comments
7 Comments