Well, what a week that was! Now the weekend is out of the way and the four horsemen haven’t showed up it’s time for us recruitment folk to have a long hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves two questions;
1. What does this mean for me?
2. What am I going to do next?
2. What am I going to do next?
The reason I’ve been asking myself these questions is I’ve only recently returned to recruitment in the executive search field and I’ve been rather enjoying it. My instant reaction early Friday morning (apart from the obvious ‘has this really happened?’ as I voted Remain) was “all my clients are going to put a recruitment freeze on and things will be terrible and I picked a great time to set up on my own, that’s it the business is over just as it was getting going!”
Once I had a word with myself I began to see this as an opportunity for us specialist agencies (who actually work on a search basis and not mass advertising and crossed fingers!) I realised our industry has been through worse; the recession of 2008 when we were told it was the end of recruitment as there were going to be no jobs around forever, the AWD and how that was definitely the end of recruitment agencies as we knew it and you know what, recruitment found a way.
Things will not change overnight and when we give our notice (Article 50) we have to work our 2 year ‘gardening leave’ which gives us ample time to arrange trade deals with countries we want to work with. We’ll always be part of Europe and the EU will want to trade with us as too many member countries import goods to us for them to really throw their toys out of the pram.
But whatever happens (and really nobody knows what is coming) businesses in the UK will need to attract and retain the best talent there is; music to the ears of us who pride ourselves on finding the best talent in the market for our vacancies and not those looking to change for a few extra quid.
So what do we do now? Well, in the “keep calm and carry on” spirit, we have to realise that even if we don’t agree with the decision that’s the whole point of democracy and we should stop finger pointing, roll our sleeves up and get back to work. It makes me immensely proud to live in a country where the people have such a voice to bring change on such a massive scale and although it wasn’t the decision I voted for I respect the majority and aim to make the best of the situation.
