A resilience lesson from a rookie recruiter

The last 18 months have been great for recruiters.

Not easy, but great rewards for the hard-working.

The market will turn, and fresh challenges will emerge. It’s likely to be a grind if the market declines.

More work for less return.

Older recruiting hands will know what I am referring to.

I fear some recruiters will not be equipped for a long haul of relentless hard work without much reward.

And this makes me think about resilience and persistence, which are words often bandied about in recruitment, but not really understood.

I define resilience in our business this way.

But I got a good lesson in persistence a decade or more ago.

And it’s worth hearing the tale. Because I needed to get a dose of my own advice.

It’s a long while ago now, but I am proud to say, I ran the Sydney Half Marathon.

That’s 21.1 kilometres around the streets of Sydney. It 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.

So why tell you this? Well, running this marathon reminded me of a critical life lesson. And it’s a lesson that has enormous 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 neighbourhood. The 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 nine 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 guys who looked like Men’s Health magazine models. 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 started wavering. “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 nine 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 the Sydney office of the business I was running at the time. This person was a good recruiter but young and relatively inexperienced. He was going through a rough time—two bad months. Offers turned down. Little return on his BD efforts.

He was despondent and told me he was unsure “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 been through, and how determination had turned things around.  I examined how building a reputation, and a genuine business took time. I shared my opinion that you often 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, self-esteem, and a sense of achievement.

And every word I told him was accurate.

But as I hesitated at the fridge door, about to grab the beer, I realised what a hypocrite I was.

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 six days of training?

I closed the fridge and hit the road again the next day. Over the next two months, I trained four or five times weekly, and I hated almost every session. Finally, 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, trained in hotel gyms, and jogged along the murky Singapore River in 90% humidity, when I could have been in the relaxed bar of the Fullarton Hotel.

School holidays came around, and I took the family on holiday to Borneo with only two weeks to go until the 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 must put in the hard work before the rewards come”.

One week from the race, I went to the Sydney Botanical Gardens and ran 15 kilometres. 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 came close to giving up on the race there and then.

On the race day, I nearly didn’t get out of bed. It was cold. I knew that 15 km had almost floored me. How could I run 21 kilometres? 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 km 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.

Finishing a run is borderline frivolous, even though for me, it was a big deal.

But with the job of recruitment, it’s the difference between thrive – or dive.

It’s true that often people have early success in recruitment. Plenty in the last year have done fantastically, but in a market that made that possible. 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 a reputation that will last? Developing sophisticated skills? Building a portfolio of loyal clients? Evolving into a trusted advisor?  Developing credibility to the point you can influence outcomes? 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 tricky things like cold calling and pushing back on domineering (but poorly informed) clients. It takes ego strength to withstand rejection and poor results. Finally, 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.

I reflect on countless examples of recruiters I have known, some very recently, who struggled at first, results so slow to come, morale dented, about to give in. But with support and inner fortitude, they went the extra mile, and success eventually flowed.

Careers saved by that extra bit of determination, pride and perseverance

Recruitment or running.

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

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