So it’s been 9 weeks since I returned to the world of recruitment and I’ve noticed something; people outside of the sector do not seem to like us at all. Even those within the sector seem to have created sub groups whereby internal recruiters don’t like executive search agencies (don’t even say headhunters, apparently), executive search agencies don’t like rec2rec agencies and so on and so forth. Oh, and, by the way, when did ‘talent acquisition’ become the new sexy language?
Now granted when I left after 10 years in the industry there was a stigma attached but I assumed that was more down to the perception of consultants drinking champagne, wearing braces, driving fast cars, smoking expensive cigars and partaking in even faster relationships (ahh the good old days!) I’ve also noticed that LinkedIn seems to have become the place where people congregate just waiting for a recruiter to stick their head up so they can shoot it off with strongly worded copy and in some cases very personal attacks on the industry with real actual complete sentences! Now I’m no prude and my skin is thick enough to have decided to set up my own business within the recruitment sector but surely there’s a better way…..
We’ve just billed our first executive placements (2 in 9 weeks is pretty good going, I think) and we’ve done this as a partner to our clients. We took the time to not only get to know the client and their long term plans, we also spent a lot of time with our candidates to understand whether the roles were a fit to their aspirations and goals, as well as the usual financial and skills match. My point being that if we spent more time working together rather than thinking we’re better than…insert role here…we could be placing a lot more people and everyone would be a lot happier.
Starting a new career for someone is an honour and a privilege. Yes, we also get paid a fee for this but only if we’re successful in placing a candidate so there’s a lot of risk upfront for us on the basis that we trust in our expertise to find the right match. So next time you feel like typing out some ‘all recruitment people are wankers’ rubbish, PLEASE cut us some slack! We know there are some god awful people within our sector who ruin it for the rest of us but can you honestly say hand on heart that everyone in your sector is as good as gold?
In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.
“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear”
