“…and trust me, we’re going to be dealing with many more w@nkers once the market improves” I find myself saying to Claudia during her annual review this week. This is my version of wisdom. Or motivation. Or both.
Of course, calling candidates (and some clients) “w@nkers” is frowned upon in the outside world. There may even be readers itching to comment below telling me that they’ll “take their business elsewhere” or “remember not to use you when I need to find my 17th job in 8 years”. Well….two things to think about there; firstly, some candidates (and some clients) really are w@nkers in the way that a cross section of society are always w@nkers. A recruitment office is like any other workplace – we let off steam to our colleagues so we don’t go on “suicide by cop” rampages in the real world. Secondly, and more importantly in the recruitment game, being a bit of a w@nker isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Although I don’t know any personally, many of my friends tell me that they’re mates with a bit of a w@nker. And if you’re an agency recruiter who bills lots of money, you will, at times, do things/say things/buy things that make you look like…yep, you guessed it…a bit of a w@nker.
So back to my statement. Why was I saying it? Firstly, it’s because dealing with candidates and clients that we don’t like is one of the hardest things we do in recruitment. In fact, most of us avoid doing it. In the most part, we justify it in a way that isn’t necessarily true. We say “morally, I don’t think we could represent them”. Or “if they treat me like that, then how will they behave in front of the hiring manager?”. Or “if they don’t respect me as a supplier, how do they treat their team?”. There is some truth in all of this of course. However, it isn’t the main reason we avoid these people. The main reason is that dealing with people we don’t like is not fun. It annoys us, makes us anxious, and eventually we like to spite them by being obtuse.
Dealing with w@nkers is important however. It won’t make an average recruiter a star performer, but it will make 5-10% difference to the real recruitment superstars. And at the upper echelons of any discipline, that’s huge. Take away 10% from a Premier League striker and he’s banging in 6 goals a year for Auckland FC. If you want to be truly excellent, you need to park some of your feelings and recognise that even w@nkers deserve a job that is right for them. A w@nker to you or I, may be the best decision a business has ever made. We are not the guardians of good taste and social etiquette. We match culture, need, experience, and talent.
So why will we be dealing with more of these types? For us, it has been a very difficult two years to move top performers. We’ve done it, but it has taken a monumental effort. I’m sure most of you, regardless of discipline have found the same. Good people have been sitting pretty. This isn’t just anecdotal (which is a shame as I prefer it that way), it’s actually got a name. One coined by Korn Ferry no less: Job Hugging. This is the antidote to “The Great Resignation” of 2022 when everyone changed jobs after Covid to secure a 20% pay rise. Instead, what we have seen are “quit rates” in the US going from 3% to 2.1%. That’s quite a shift. Economic uncertainty and this drawn-out recession has created an environment where the devil you know really is better. Whereas high-risk and high-reward was once exciting, the idea of the carriage clock and office chair set just-about-right has become the preferred option. Of course this has not been good for those who make money out of moving people.
Some argue that this is nothing new. Merely just a new buzzword that some Korn Ferry intern gifted to the Partner who took the credit. They’re probably right. Regardless, it is clearly not a cultural shift. It’s a reaction to an uncertain market. A coiled spring. All we need is for one small-handed man to choke on his Big Mac. And if this happens, the era of Job Hugging will pass, and the w@nkers will return. And I’ll welcome them with open arms.
…and if you’re a recruitment firm who can see the shift already, but are fed up with hiring expensive, opinionated, unmanageable recruiters like me, well do I have a treat for you! Our new-to-recruitment “speed dating” event Access is back with a bang. Spaces are limited, so check it out here.
^SW
