Merry New Year – as they say in countries who speak English as a second language. If you’re reading this, you’re one of the seemingly few who decided to start your working year on the 6th of January, and not the 13th. Hopefully everyone is well rested, although if your break was anything like mine, sailing through the empty Auckland streets to get into the office offers a welcome respite from a stressful and chaotic Christmas. To summarise my break, we’ve had between 15 and 8 people under our roof for the entire festive period – the majority of them staying from overseas. This has included my parents, my au pair’s parents, and various friends, all of whom assuming that wine glasses automatically fill themselves, and that turkeys, legs of lamb, and ham, arrive on their plate from some benevolent Christmas elf. Little do they realise, that little elf is me and my wife spending $5k on booze, the same on food, and constantly shifting bottles of rosé from one fridge to the next in a bit to sate King Leonidas’ 300. I shouldn’t complain of course. For entertainment, we have my mum telling the same f*cking story about something that never happened at least 5 times a day.
There is an irony to this blog given that all I currently crave is to hide in a cave with a pot noodle and a copy of Razzle. I’m also not one who typically believes in any form of resolution. Those who are quitting the booze, hitting the gym, or dumping their prostitute lover rarely do – and if they do, become very boring people. However, in my first week back, my colleague Claudia taught me a lesson, and this lesson was further reinforced over a glass of chilled pinot noir with a client. The lesson is about meeting candidates.
Since Covid, meeting people in general has fallen out of fashion. Client meetings get cancelled, candidates are interviewed via Teams, and young people aren’t even boning anymore, preferring to communicate via Tik-Tok and zapping each other’s avatars online. This has been a real boon for the WFH industry, with snack manufacturers, cardboard stand up desk companies, Pornhub, and Kleenex reporting record profits. There have been victims however. Now, actually meeting someone in person feels like a much bigger commitment than it once was. As a recruiter, if a client gives us time in their diary to meet us or a candidate in person, we feel truly privileged. Typically however, these meeting never happen. Instead, in the morning, after we’ve ironed our best shirt, we get a diary update shifting it online. Queen Street used to be full of crinkly-suited recruiters shuffling between client and candidate meetings. Now, we’re all sitting in front of a blurred-out clothes horse pretending we have a flash home office.
Anyway, this week I noticed Claudia sticking something in my diary. Because I’m lazy, I hit accept without looking at what it was. And then yesterday morning I realised it was to meet a candidate – a candidate that I can’t really do much with. And because of 5 years of social conditioning making me believe that my time was more important than it actually is, I groaned. Do I really need to be in this meeting? Reluctantly I showed up, and of course, the candidate was the best I’ve met in a very long time and I have so many things to talk to them about. Claudia was right and I was wrong.
Then later that day, we met a client. A good client, but one that is challenging to recruit for. Some of the challenge is that they know what works for them and are sometimes reluctant to meet those who don’t meet the criteria on paper. After a chat about this, we agreed that they will take a leap of faith in what we do, and meet whoever we represent. We may make fools of ourselves, or we may find them their next superstar who they wouldn’t have typically considered. And that’s what good recruitment is all about.
So going forward, I think we need to think about our terms of engagement. Us recruiters typically agree fees, then ask if we can work exclusively, and then off we go. How about we agree up front that we will present a smaller number of candidates, but we ask that all those presented are interviewed regardless of how they look on paper? This takes a leap of faith by the client, and some recruiters will show themselves up. For good operators however, it will provide a fantastic opportunity to demonstrate the value that they can add.
Anyway, that’s it for today. Very few people are reading this anyway. See you next week.
^SW
