I’ve worked many boring jobs. I’ve sorted mail, built beer cooling machines, mixed spices, sat on the end of conveyer belts, worked in two(!) different garlic factories, calibrated fruit machines, bottled water, and even cleaned out sanitary bins (not a job for a young man trying to maintain a positive view of the “fairer sex”). Apart from the always-interesting people, all these minimum-wage jobs had one thing in common. They were all incredibly boring.
This is perhaps why I subconsciously gravitated towards recruitment. Recruitment (as I understood it), could not possibly be boring. You meet businesses, and businesses are inherently interesting. You also meet people, and they can be interesting, and they certainly can tell you interesting stuff. I even heard a few rumours prior to joining the industry that a fair few beers could be sunk.
However, Recruitment, like anything you’re paid to do, is of course incredibly boring. Here’s some boring tasks and jobs for us to get bored over this morning.
Adding information to an ATS: No one tells you about this when you interview. Hiring managers are so obsessed with your sales drive, what football team you support, and if you plan on having a baby any time soon, that they forget to mention that recruitment is largely an admin job. As much as ATS providers lie, they are all clunky, infuriating, and very boring to update. There is no way to make ticking boxes, attaching CVs, and pasting notes fun. In the UK in the 80s and 90s there was a brand of peanuts sold in pubs which were displayed on a board with a scantily clad woman behind. Each pack purchased would display more flesh. JobAdder, how about we do something similar? Each completed section of a candidate profile reveals some more of a topless Kelly LeBrock/Steven Seagal?
Working for a job board: I have worked with multiple job boards across multiple geographies, and I still don’t understand what they do day-to-day. As far as I can see, any country has either a monopoly or duopoly, so this negates client acquisition. If you own a white colour recruitment firm in NZ, you’re gonna have a SEEK account. So then it’s about selling a bigger plan each year. That’s a meeting in a pub, 5 beers, and a contract to sign. Account Managers are always awesome people, but respectfully, how do they keep their sanity?
Interviewing candidates: What??! Isn’t this what it’s all about? Well yes….at first. In the first half of our careers, interviews are serious business. We have some set questions, some bespoke pre-planned, and some asked on the fly. We write down answers (later to copy into an ATS in the hope of seeing Seagal naked), and run a consistent process for all applicants. The second half of our careers is different. Bored with the above, we flick through a LinkedIn profile to see if they’ve worked anywhere good for any length of time, ask what they actually delivered, why they left certain roles too soon, and spend the rest of the time speaking about kids sports teams and restaurant recommendations.
Explaining why (some) people are unsuitable for a job: Don’t get me wrong, I think it fair that reasonable candidates get a reasonable explanation as to why they are being rejected. I’m not talking about these. What I’m talking about is the Northland Security Guard that wants a 30 minute telephone consultation on why they are not Vero’s next CTO. As a one off, this is fine. In the current market however, when we may get 300 applicants, explaining (and then arguing), with old mate as to why he’s not ready for Head of Medicine at Middlemore can become somewhat tedious.
Writing (and reading) blogs and “content”: Oh the irony. Before the ChatGPT pandemic, recruitment GMs used to set writing blogs and content as a KPI for their Consultants. These GMs had been told by someone (who wasn’t a recruiter) that this would make their staff “thought leaders” and also “drive organic traffic” to their website. This lead to Recruiters who hate writing wasting their time writing pithy prose which was then signed off by their boss. Their boss, believing that annoying one potential client is one too many, edited anything fun or interesting out of the article. This made the process of writing it dull, and the process of reading it even more so. Thankfully I have mental problems.
Anyway, that’s enough of the boring stuff. Notice I didn’t put BD (yup!), pitching roles, closing candidates, sinking beers, and doing deals? That stuff is great. Until next week.
Live, laugh, toaster bath.
^SW
