You have a lot of things to do in your job. Am I right?

You are super-busy all the time. Candidates to interview. Resumes to prepare. References to take. Sales calls to make. Visits to go on. Calls to return. Admin to tie up. Your company also has a raft of KPI’s and activities they want you to meet. It never…

Recruiters often complain about the fickleness of clients. Clients don’t return our calls, they don’t give commitment, and they don’t follow through.

Often true.

But, is it always the client’s fault? Does the relationship flounder because you don’t put in the effort you should? Indeed, do you commit the cardinal sin of slipping into ‘chronic client complacency’? Honestly, I have done it myself, and paid the price. I see it happening all around me too. Bet you see, and…

This one is for recruiters. Especially recruiters with a couple of years experience, who think they are good. In fact you may think you are pretty damn good!

Well, there is a huge threat facing you. And it’s not social media, or technology or the economy, or RPO, nor the rise of  in-house recruiters.

It’s you.

To be more specific, it’s your attitude. And to be even more precise, it’s your arrogance and complacency. I can’t tell you how many promising…

No doubt you have been overwhelmed with high-level forecasts from wise recruiting soothsayers about 2012 being the year of mobile recruiting, the critical importance of building talent communities, the rise of employer branding… and many other trends that, truthfully, you hardly understand and definitely have little control over.

These people are smart, and much of what they say is spot on. But a lot is total hogwash too, no more than a distraction, and certainly most of it, you…

Stress at work is dangerous. Seriously. I believe it leads to medical issues, and it certainly will harm your relationships and overall quality of life.

And that is bad for us recruiters because we do one of the toughest jobs around. The ‘all or nothing’ nature of what we do is designed to induce stress, it seems.

Over the years I have seen recruiters reduced to highly destructive and…

You call them ‘clients’ and you think they see you as a business partner. Take this quick test and maybe… think again! Tick each statement that applies to you.

1. They won’t meet you to provide a new job brief. It’s emailed, or given over the phone, or maybe its just a few lines in an email.
2. They give you jobs in…

The biggest cause of placements going wrong, is people making assumptions.

Placing a candidate starts with building a relationship with that candidate and establishing ‘terms of engagement’, if you like. Usually, it is essential to develop a rapport and a tight co-operation to ensure the right match is made.

From a candidate point of view, working with a recruiter to find a new role should be painless. In fact it should make the process much smoother overall!

A good…

Most people who become recruiters do not last. There are many reasons for that. Poor hiring decisions and inadequate training being high on the list.

But there is another key reason why so few people actually last in the hurly-burly world of agency recruiting.

It’s a frigging hard job!

So I know that sometimes you question why you do it. There are times you hate what you do. There are days you go home feeling deflated, worn-out and frankly, useless.

The…

There are only two reasons to come to work.

Fun and money.

And you have to have both. One of them will not be enough. Not if you want to love what you do, that is. Having a job where you get just one or the other, often seduces you into thinking you have found your dream job. But in most cases that dream fades like mirage as you realise a key ingredient of  ‘job love’ is missing.

And for recruiters, where our job is so hard, and the disappointments so many, you…

Recently, I wrote about the scourge of lateness that plagues business these days, and I gave meeting start-times as an example of the disrespect many people show their colleagues. That blog post created a storm of comment, and some of the discussion centered on meetings themselves, and what a waste of time they can be.

And in…

Everyone says recruiting is changing. The evidence is overwhelming that we are on the cusp of a seismic shift in the way our industry needs to work. It is all changing. Client expectations, candidate behavior, social media, technology.

But how do we sort out the reality from the hype? And what should the ordinary recruiter do to prepare for the future?

Well, a great place to start is to make sure you understand what is different about the way our clients are thinking…

Productivity in recruitment is totally linked to activity.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking anything else.

Yes, the quality of that activity is key, and whom you actually do that activity with is important too. But if you don’t do enough ‘stuff’, you will fail.

Take that as…

This weeks post is a little different, in two ways.

Firstly, it is in fact a Vlog, rather than a blog, and I encourage you to watch the video, focusing more on the content than the plain visage of your faithful blogger!

Secondly instead of a recruitment tip, I am focusing today on the global job market. Is it improving?

I travel a lot. Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and the UK just…

A few weeks ago we received the tragic news that a good friend and long time colleague, had suddenly passed away, in shocking and totally unexpected circumstances.

Duncan Cunningham, who I worked with for almost 10 years, not yet even 40 years old, and with a young family, was suddenly gone.

In Australia, one of our most famous folk ‘pub’ songs is called “I’d love to have a beer with Duncan” by…

Last week I blogged on the importance of “job order triage”. Great recruiters ruthlessly prioritise the briefs they work on, and put most effort into the highly fillable few.

Well, what about the candidates to invest time in?

Some recruiters take the view that as there is a talent shortage, every candidate…

Recently I was asked by one of our Sydney Talent Agents to join her on a client visit to a high profile Ad Agency group. I jumped at the chance because I love speaking with clients, and we were booked to meet two very senior people, both at Executive Creative Director level.

We arrived on time (5 minutes early actually, as is my wont) and waited in the trendy, borderline pretentiously creative reception.

And we waited.

And waited.

At 10 past the meeting hour we…

If you have ever been a TV Hospital drama junkie, you would have heard the word triage many times.

Certainly I noticed my wife perk up noticeably when George Clooney strides into the waiting room on any episode of ER.

Triage is the process of prioritising patient treatment, based on the severity of their condition.

Recruitment has none of the drama or dire consequences of triage in the medical sense. Nevertheless, poor recruiting triage skills can mean…

If you have plans to be a great recruiter, please, remember this and never forget it.

Filling a job does not start with finding good candidates for a particular job order. It starts with the quality with which you take the job order in the first place. It does not matter if you take the brief face to face (and you should, if at all possible), or over the phone. Filling the order starts with how well you qualify that order.

You have to make sure, at the very…

What do you say to a friend who wants your ‘real’ opinion on a matter of some sensitivity? You know, “Do you think I should marry him?” or showing off a new pair of jeans, “Does my butt look big in this?”

It’s a tricky dilemma. You don’t want to rock the boat. You certainly don’t want to hurt your friends’ feelings.  But on the other hand, being honest, while painful, is almost certainly in their best interests.

To answer these questions well, it takes courage. It takes…

I have written before on the farcical chaos that results when recruiting clients engage multiple recruiters to work on the same job order. And I have offered advice on how a recruiter should sell exclusivity to…