News is hard to decipher these days, the whole concept of ‘fake news’ has squirmed its way firmly into the global zeitgeist. Take this week, from bombs landing in Poland to CR7 saying that Luke Shaw was seen scoffing chocolate cake off a dusty Community Shield. Sometimes you don’t know what to believe. There was a time when obviously absurd news was reserved for the 1st of July and you were a literal fool for believing in it. However now, it’s not uncommon to have been conned by a deep fake or politically biased post. With the bar for truth getting lowered on a daily basis it’s a dogfight for validity out there. But every once in a while, a story will float up and you just have to call bullshit. Something so fictitious you find yourself asking, is this how bad it has become? That people are willing to accept this tosh just because they have a horse in a race. This week’s farcical fable comes in the form of a Female Delusion Calculator.
It first came to my attention on an endless swipe fest on Instagram’s reels. A gentleman who I am going to go out on a limb, religiously followed Andrew Tate before he was scrubbed from social media. He was talking about this new bit of tech, backed by The American Census Board or some made-up sounding fake Gov body. It is effectively a probability calculator that calculates the chances of you meeting a partner in The States based on certain parameters. Those being; height, weight, race, marital status, and annual earnings. What quickly becomes apparent is that it is far from comprehensive. Especially as it gives a delusional score in cat litter bags. For a frame of reference the avg. height in the states is 5”9 and salary at $30K. Even if you input those realistic aims you get a drastically low percentage output. I’m not going to give this too many inches, take a look at the Calculator yourself and read a pretty thorough article taking apart its legitimacy. It did get me thinking though, what if we had a Candidate Delusion Calculator?
The recent pandemic has created a bit of a weird world as far as expectations go. A mix of clients aggressively counter-offering candidates considering moves, coupled with a lack of available candidates in the market has resulted in a skewed perception of worth. I recruit recruiters so it is very black-and-white as far as performance is concerned. However, most desks will have a candidate base where performance is quantifiable. Our candidates’ hot buttons will be shared such as; progression, flexibility, location, earnings, and security. So, for the sake of this blog, I’m talking about candidates as a whole and not just recruiters. Let’s work on the sliding scale similar to the incel that created the previous model. Say you are looking for 2 days at home a week, a salary of $100K, within a 5K radius of your home, and a promotion within 8 months. Then you input your experience and performance. I think some people would be surprised by how low the percentage would be of landing their sought-after role. Then again, some have a stronger leg to stand on.
Tenure within a business and performance are two of the biggest factors in the recruitment world. Not saying you can’t move around as it is the lifeblood of our industry but, not completing a single financial year before moving to the next place is ill-advised. Performance can also be given some context, say your role has evolved into more management of junior staff or you change specialisms for example. The job market is like the housing market, it’s all about timing. There’s some serious cash being thrown around at the moment. This has been an awesome year for a lot of agency recruiters, there’s less of you about than ever before and there are more jobs than you can shake a spreadsheet at. While it is important to be realistic about your aims and put ceilings on desires there should be a drive to capitalize on success. I was briefly at the Seek event last night, I had to take my ol dear to the airport as she was heading back to the UK. Talking to a lot of industry leaders they had the feeling that a snap back to reality is going to be quite jarring for a number of people in the market. I agree, although if someone is on an inflated salary as long as they have the performance to back it, is the salary inflated? You may have to remind your candidate base that there is a pound of flesh expected for such a hefty price but as recruiters, we tend to live by the sword. It’s a thin line between delusion and confidence and if you truly back yourself then we can definitely have a talk about that percentage probability. 😊
