Have you ever noticed how high demand affects the quality of customer service we experience? If you’ve ever found yourself shopping on Oxford Street in London at Christmas time, you’ll see this. Chubby, sallow-skinned English women wrestling Zara tops from each other to then be treated like cattle by equally chubby, sallow skinned, rude, bored, retail staff. Or trying to buy the latest “must have” kids toy. Or trying to pick up the only woman in a noisy nightclub full of desperate men. Simply put, if there isn’t much to go round, manners go out the window. Such is human nature I guess. Some companies, who’s whole business model is based upon creating a perception of “exclusivity” try and create this experience intentionally. Just look how misguided Chinese people queue in the rain outside an empty handbag shop on Queen Street. Getting eyed up by a bouncer on a Tuesday morning for two hours to then spend eight grand on a handbag that makes them look like every other Chinese tourist and real estate agent. It’s genius really. Not only does undersupply create bad manners, but bad manners suggests undersupply.
Why do I bring this up? Do I just think Louis Vuitton handbags are kinda lame? Well yes, but also I’ve been noticing some interesting behaviours from hiring managers in this current market. If we go back a couple of years, the market we served was quite different. Simply put, there wasn’t a recruitment firm in New Zealand who wouldn’t look at a Consultant who bills $400k plus. The “interesting” thing about rec-to-rec is that although we believe we’re the best around, and can work best when we work exclusively with clients, it rarely works that way. You can be the biggest crook around, but back in 2022, any crook could float a $600k biller’s CV into an agency GMs inbox, and they could make a placement. As much as I feel we have solid relationships with our clients, I can’t blame them for having their head turned by a good CV. The problem however, was that there were no $600k billers wanting to leave their current role. In this market, the formula looked as follows: Lots of jobs + No candidates = fantastic candidate experiences. Many of our clients would roll out the red carpet for a candidate manager. Flights were booked. Hotels paid for. CEOs wheeled into meetings. Lululemon-clad beach walks were had. However, in this current market we’re seeing something different. More on this later.
Being a confirmed metrosexual, I was getting my undercarriage waxed yesterday. Unfortunately, my salon, which I have visited for over a decade is closing down. It seems that bespoke kitchens, recruitment services, and the removal of body hair are all expendable luxuries in the current market. I was talking to my waxer about what she is going to do next. Wanting to move into a more administrative/office management type role, she has got her CV out and has a number of interviews booked next week – all through agencies. She was asking me for some basic advice on interview preparation, and I naturally asked what the recruitment consultants had told her about the companies and the roles, and what they have said to her by way of preparation. Of course she looked at me blankly. She actually hadn’t been spoken to about the roles or the companies. Instead emailed an interview slot, job title, and company name. It would appear that in market full of candidates and not many jobs, this constitutes preparation. Like lambs to the slaughter, a constant stream of candidates can be lead into the interview room until one, by sheer luck, says the right things and gets offered. No luck with this flock? There’s plenty more where they came from.
We see the same mentality in a few of our clients currently. The days of impressing a candidate first, and assessing later have gone out the window for some. Perhaps as a knock-on effect from what they’re seeing across their own client base, usually charming recruitment leaders have certainly become more direct, more gruff, and more keen to challenge a candidate in the first interview. Gone is the foreplay. We’re straight into red-hot and Dutch. A small number of our clients seem to have the misconception that any candidate we present is failing to bill elsewhere and is desperate to join their business. In fact, right now, the opposite is true. Our clients are rightly very selective on who they hire in this market. This has raised the bar even higher for who we’d represent. Someone who may have got three offers two years ago, might get a respectful “sorry but we can’t help you” in the current market. And this leaves us, and our clients, with a problem. Good candidates are giving negative feedback because the way the first meeting is handled. The client is losing out on a great recruiter, the recruiter is getting a misconception on a great business, and, most importantly, we’re losing a fee, and waxing isn’t cheap.
Of course, we are not immune to this ourselves. For certain roles, we are getting inundated. Often with people wildly inappropriate. Applications can be managed by technology, but phone calls on a Sunday morning have to be dealt with by a hungover yours truly. It takes every ounce of my being to remember that these are just job seekers trying to support themselves and make a living. Sometimes I manage it, sometimes I lose my sh*t.
Anyway, my next blog will come to you via the UK as I’m over there sniffing out the market, and hopefully bringing some high billers back with me. If you lot know of any, please send them this.
^SW
