Almost all owners of recruitment companies make this disastrous error. I have done it myself. But I learned. It affects recruiters, too, and it can hurt them badly. We must be honest with ourselves. As an industry, we sometimes descend into a herd mentality. Lemming-like, even. We are skittish, scare easily, and see things in black or white.

The ‘hire/fire recruiter’ dysfunction serves as a perfect example.

In 2020 and part of 2021, Covid hit, and we had a shortage of jobs, so we fired cose to 40% of our recruiters. (No BS)

In 2022 as the market bounced back and caught us unawares, jobs surged, and we had a resourcing problem, so we hired in droves. Laughably, recruitment owners and managers moaned loud and often about the lack of “Competent recruiters with two years of experience.”

Of course, you can’t find them! You fired them all two years ago, and they left the industry!

You reap what you sow.

Sure, Covid was a genuine bolt from the blue, but it’s the same in all downturns. Right now, corporates are laying off internal recruiters. They are firing the same internal recruiters/TA types they poached from agencies at a salary premium 18 months ago! Most agencies will do exactly the same thing if the downturn bites.

Get off the ludicrous recruitment see-saw!

Right now, instead of firing recruiters whose billings are dropping as the market shifts, work extra hard to help them to cope in the face of change, and be at least passably productive during the lean period. That means support, training, mentoring and precise goal-setting. (Actually, you should have started that 12 months ago in full knowledge the market would turn. Because it always does. And you knew that, right? But did you do anything?)

Then, when the market recovers again, as it inevitably will, you have battle-hardened, hungry recruiters ready to thrive while your competitors start bleating about ‘no recruiters to hire.‘

Sure, you may not be able to keep everyone. But get off the ‘all or nothing‘ train. Even if you make a little less profit while you retain solid people, still learning, you will make that back tenfold in the upswing as you grab market share galore.

It’s the same with the treatment of clients.

For the last 18 months, we have focussed on the clients who gave us the most return because if we found candidates, they hired them fast. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Meanwhile, we created a whole tier of ‘second-class clients’ who we put little energy into. Don’t BS yourselves. I have heard it in job meetings. “Don’t spend much time on them“. (They are even called ‘Second Tier Clients’ in some places or ‘B list clients’.)

We are starting to need them because job numbers are dropping (See the data from JobAdder Global Recruitment Industry Report), so the focus shifts from candidates to clients. Instead, we should have nurtured, managed, and kept all those relationships fresh in the sure knowledge that the wheel would turn.

That effing see-saw!

Candidates are probably the prime example.

It has been about the candidate for the past two years, but if jobs dry up, they will be neglected. It is happening already.

Proactive candidate tactics (headhunting, internal database sourcing, etc.) boomed when the supply was short, but now the pendulum is swinging the other way. Look at this chart I lifted from the JobAdder Report. Candidates were hard to find, so the recruiters dived into proactive sourcing. Now the tight candidate market is easing slightly, and recruiters take the focus off that. The see-saw again.

Source: JobAdder Global Recruitment Industry Report

The intelligent recruitment approach is that you always know we need both sides to make this match.

So, whatever you do as hiring demand drops, don’t return to the shocking lack of candidate service ethos that has characterised our industry for so long.

Even as you develop your BD muscle with clients, and you should, make sure you do not take the focus off activating your candidate pipeline because it’s how you treat those candidates when you don’t need them that will dictate how many candidates you have when the hiring market improves.

Double down on candidate experience and referrals and CCCCF. It’s when you don’t need them as much that your service and empathy will differentiate you.

To me, it’s mostly a leadership issue. Take a longer-term view. Invest not only in where you see today’s return but also in planning for the future.

It impacts your recruiters because they will suffer if you allow them to ride that see-saw with you.

A burning case in point is all those recruiters who billed very well over the past two years but did it all by servicingwork that poured into the door or was won by senior colleagues or part of a PSA/PSL. They are good job fillers but lack sales skills, BD ideas, credibility or client relationships.

They are on the downside of the see-saw, with no chance of catching the upswing (I am milking that metaphor, I grant you!)

This is a leadership challenge.

We should never have allowed it to evolve this way.

But recruiters, too, can allocate time and effort accordingly.

Think hard now about how to get back on an even keel.

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