I f*cking love politics. I love it in a way that some love reality TV. Although I didn’t appreciate it, I come from a long line of males who were politically minded. My great-grandad – an east-end docker – wouldn’t let you in the house if you voted anything but Labour. My dad, until being murdered by Pinochet, spent most of the 80s on the picket line in Thatcher’s Britain. It was therefore preordained that I were to spend my days banging on about socialism whilst excusing and denying my painfully middle-class lifestyle. I can’t help but be surprised therefore by the number of recruiters who don’t care about politics. To be a good recruiter doesn’t take much, but it does take curiosity. If you have curiosity, picking up the phone is no biggie. Are you not a tiny bit curious about who governs us? Ah, but Sean…all these politicians are the same. They all speak the same bullsh*t. Well, that makes no sense either. Firstly, if you can’t carry that cynicism but still be curious, how the hell are you still recruiting? All clients and candidates and jobs and colleagues are all full of bullsh*t. We, as recruiters, are bullsh*t distilled. Since when has bullsh*t stopped us? Secondly, politicians are not all the same. Regardless of your preference, Chlöe Swarbrick and David Seymour are not the same. Calling Assemble and getting Build People is not “the same”.
Anyway, this week I’ve been enjoying the National Party. You know what I mean, but briefly: NZ Herald leak that National politicians are plotting to “roll” anti-abortionist Chris Luxon. Luxon finds out. Everyone has to fly to Wellington. They expose Chris Penk as the “lone gunman” and Luxon gives a 15 second press conference to say “nothing to see here“. Kinda like telling my wife I’m nipping out to my car to find a used condom, and then coming back to say “I didn’t find one. I don’t know why you’re so angry?!“. There was most definitely something to see. Chris Penk, the sacrificial lamb, has since been stripped of his job, and his only career option now will be to work for Shay Peters. This is how loyalty (or lack of) is dealt with in politics.
‘Cept it’s not.
There is absolutely zero f*cking chance that Penk was ringing around to push for his own candidature for leader. F*cking zero. Leadership challenges don’t work like this anywhere in the world. Someone lesser, but aligned to the person who wants the job does the ringing, and on my daughter’s life, it was either/and Chris Bishop and Erica Stanford. Ain’t no one voting for Penk. Bishop’s head is large enough (in every f*cking regard) to believe people might vote for him, and Standford is clearly being groomed for the top job. Does she want to wait it out as shadow leader? This is a Shakespearian conspiracy, this is “Et tu, Brute?“, this is the Last Supper, mark my words. And it isn’t just a Claudia Dawson-Jenner-esque conspiracy garnered from too much late night YouTube – this is believed by others smarter than me. The truth however, creates an even bigger problem for Luxon. Chucking out one disloyal element can be massaged to look “OK”. Imagine chucking out Penk, Bishop, and Stanford, and then saying “Hey guys, we’re all good here. Vote for us. And do some f*cking work Rotorua”.
History is written by the victors. Penk’s phone calls to gauge caucus support were “brave and necessary” had they succeeded. History would have recorded Stanford and Bishop as the people with the courage to act in the national interest when a failing leader needed to be replaced. Instead, Luxon survived, and now Penk is radioactive while the two people who were definitely on the other end of those calls are flanking the PM and nodding solemnly at his press conference. And this is how recruitment works. When we headhunt a candidate and it lands well, we’ve kindly taken the time to have a market conversation with a talented professional about an exciting opportunity that better reflects their worth. When we headhunt a candidate and it doesn’t work, we’ve deliberately targeted a loyal employee and tried to destabilise a good business for our own financial gain. Same phone call. Different outcome. Completely different moral framing. We spend our days headhunting recruiters from firms we don’t work with. Some say “let’s chat“. Others go running to their boss, who then email us to warn us off. They say things like “if my staff were looking to leave, they’d tell me” and “please run any future approaches by me“. Can you see why these absolute clowns aren’t our clients? Many years ago, a leader at our client Madison (don’t worry, different owners, different leaders) asked me to headhunt an employee. This person was a good guy, but it wasn’t working out, and he’d be “better suited to internal“. I called him only for him to berate me for headhunting from a client, and then complain about me to the very boss who told me to headhunt him. The outcome decides the morality.
The other recruitment parallel here is the counter-offer. Luxon has kept Stanford and Bishop around because booting all three would cost him the election. He needs them. But don’t tell me he isn’t eyeing their phones every time a text pops up during a Cabinet meeting. Everyone who has ever made a counter-offer knows this feeling. You have kept a “disloyal” employee around because you need them. But you no longer want them. You know, they know, and they know you know. And nothing is quite the same after that. Loyalty is a strange thing. Is leaving a job, any job, disloyal? As a career long recruiter I will say absolutely not. We have one life and we need to follow our passions and dreams. Do I have a moral issue with people accepting counter-offers, then yes, I suppose I do. If you’re not happy, then you owe it to your boss to say so. If someone approaches you with a better job, you can still talk to your boss about improving your current role. If the answer is “no”, then quit. And don’t look back.They say that if you take a shot at the king, you better not miss. I like that. If you’re going to make a bold move – be it a leadership challenge, dumping your husband, or quitting a job, you gotta be certain. And you have to understand that history will judge you on the outcome. Someone was once called crazy for resigning from Kodak I’m sure.
In my opinion, Luxon is screwed. Not because he’s thoroughly unlikeable and ineffective. More so, that he’ll be looking at his team like they’re circling vultures and not valued subordinates. He’s made a public show of the importance of “loyalty”, and he might even scrape through into a second term. However, he’s probably already asked IT if he can gain access to everyone’s emails.
^SW
