Do you know what I miss? White dog sh*t and smoking on aeroplanes. Do you know what else? Really crap recruitment firms. This seemingly nonsensical statement isn’t just designed to gain clicks in a world where only clicks matter. There’s some reasoning behind my madness. But first, let’s kill some word count by giving the background. Firstly, if you’re a candidate or client looking to use the services of a recruitment firm in New Zealand, I actually don’t think you’ve ever had it better. If we go back a few years to the post-Covid boom, recruiters were everywhere. Mostly because jobs were everywhere and people were not. In markets like this, let me tell you what it takes to be a profitable recruiter; a phone, a laptop (optional), confidence (faked), and a big mouth. If you have these not-so-rare qualities, in a good market, you will make placements. This is good for those who want to make money in the recruitment industry, it’s good for tax revenue, it’s good for real estate agents, and it’s good for boozy lunches. Who it’s not so good for is clients, who have to deal with being bombarded by poorly trained and unethical recruiters, and candidates who get bombarded by the same bunch of people.
The last two years have created a different scenario. As recruitment has got harder, lesser firms and lesser recruiters have gone elsewhere. Some globals have wound-down or pulled out of NZ entirely, some boutiques have gone bust, and some “trade” in the same way that Napster still “trades”. Arguably, the New Zealand agency “scene” is smaller than ever. And in the most part, like a wildfire removing dead bush, it has been a case of survival of the fittest. Few prosper, but good firms at least continue to trade. Yes, clients and candidates have fewer options, but overall, the options are better. It’s at this point in the proceedings that angry old men start commenting below that such-and-such never called them back and they’ll never be using xxxx agency again etc. Hush now.
Logic should follow, and if my metaphor works, this wildfire has created the perfect environment for good recruitment firms to flourish right? RIGHT? Alas, no. I swear to God that the lack of crap firms makes it harder for all of us recruiters. Especially us at Rice and Co. Here’s why:
Good firms don’t grow to fill a void as quickly as crap firms do. Good firms have very high standards on which recruiters they’ll hire. Crap firms, less so. As this market improves, it won’t be the good firms making bold and brash hiring decisions. It’ll be the chancers. Most industries have a higher cost to entry. Machines. Stock. Premises. We don’t have that. A crap firm can be trading Monday and make its first hire on Tuesday. The lack of crap firms right now, does not solve the issue of crap firms in the future. They multiply. Like the basic organisms they are.
Secondly, there is a spiritual and philosophical aspect to this. Many of you will know of my years in the seminary, before I realised that Greg Savage was the actual messiah (complete with his own gospel). The two things that have stayed with me from this time are a prolapsed rectum and the belief in good vs evil and light vs dark. Without the Joker, there’s no Batman, without Tom, there’s no Jerry, without an international cabal of highly-trained despotic terrorists, there’s no Steven Seagal. And without crap firms, how are we meant to look exceptional? If we are Yin, we need a Yang. If we’re John McClane, we need Hans Gruber. So…every recruiter does this: We show up to a client visit, and some still have an “old skool” signing-in book. We check for other recruiters, and rub our hands together when we read the names of various rogues and clowns. Of course, the modern recruiter goes through the little bin to see the ripped off name stickers. Nothing makes a recruiter look better than a terrible prior experience. These days, most recruitment firms are mostly OK. Standing out is much harder. It’s like a man downloading Tinder and finding out the only other fellas on there are The Thunder from Down Under, Henry Cavill, and Ryan Gosling. Most of us need a few Woody Allen’s/David Seymour’s to look subjectively good.
Then there’s the biggest issue. Without crap-to-average firms, it’s going to be very difficult for good recruitment firms to aggressively grow their businesses. And that makes our job really f*cking hard. Like real estate in reverse, it has historically been very wise for recruitment agencies to hire the best recruiter from the worst agency. These people have proven that they can bill good money in a crap firm, they have probably demonstrated resilience by working for an awful boss, they’re hard working, loyal to a fault, and importantly, when they interview with a good agency, their minds are officially blown. Lesser agencies have been helping better agencies grow since the industry was created. Think of it as the lower leagues feeding the Premier League. Or college football (with just as much corruption and inappropriate touching). Without this bedrock, the league system collapses. Currently, growing an agency relies on persuading a good recruiter from a good firm to move to another good firm. We can polish and position the uniqueness all day long, but it’s a slog.
This is the view of a rec-to-rec firm I know. I concede that right now, clients and candidates may be getting a marginally better quality of service. This is short-termism however. Soon enough the agency market will start to grow again (not by huge amounts, we have AI now), and the same scoundrels will reappear first. They always do. And in turn, service levels will be dragged down slightly, but the good agencies will, by comparison if nothing else, shine again. And when it comes to growing a quality recruitment firm, we need the chancers, whether we like it or not.
^SW
