Not all Recruiters are created equal…

I was struck this week by a recruiter-shared LinkedIn post, entitled “The Story of a Recruiter’. It was most likely an innocent share with no anticipation of the flurry of response which ensued. The original post got 289 likes and 38 comments. As part of this share, the recruiter added a simple, non-emotive comment: “Fact”. Well, as I write, the share has 2,268 likes and 339 comments.

I have never been so fascinated by a post and comment trail as this one. At first I laughed and even commented that if any of my recruiters had ever sent 50 cv’s to a client I would have shot them. Figuratively of course! Then I started reviewing some of the comments which came from all levels and groups of people across the globe. The response fell squarely into two distinct camps:

1) A defensive, frustrated and clearly lost camp of recruiters, and

2) The client, hiring managers and enlightened recruiters.

This post shall now be renamed, ‘The Story of a BAD Recruiter’.  It is no wonder the world of recruitment still suffers from a bad reputation. I thought perhaps at first this post was a joke. However, the comments in defense of it, clearly show that the prevalence of the ‘Bad Recruiter’ is alive and kicking. I am shocked that even if the Bad Recruiter exists, a company or hiring community would accept this level of weakness – the conversion ratios in the scenario are simply shocking and a total time waster for all concerned, notwithstanding the bad candidate experience for the 49 candidates who did not have the final say… This would have been a classic case study for poor candidate experience.

The Story of a GOOD Recruiter would look similar to this:

• A Recruiter works hard and sends max. 6 profiles to the company
• Client likes all candidates and shortlists them for interview
• 3 candidates attend a final interview
• 2 finalists are met by a senior stakeholder to ensure both a bought in and pre-closed
• 1 candidate is offered the job. The back-up candidate is managed appropriately
• Candidate accepts offer
• Recruiter has professionally managed candidates and clients throughout the process
• Recruiter professionally closes out the candidates who were not offered the job
• Good Recruiter becomes a trusted adviser, gets repeat business and makes money
• Bad Recruiter blames the client, hates their job and continues adding to the recruitment industries’ bad rep (angry face here).
• Happy Client, Happy Candidate, Happy Recruiter. END of STORY.

Notwithstanding many of the these poor recruitment scenarios unfortunately still ‘gracing’ us with their presence,  let us remember that not all recruiters are created equal.  Recruitment is not easy when faced with the unpredictability of the human element, client complexity and demands. We shall however, continue to fight the fight to get best practices out there, to earn and keep the reputation of the recruitment industry up high.

“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well”. Jeff Bezos, CEO – Amazon. 

Want to chat about this?

If you have thoughts, views or questions on this post or wish to discuss potential resourcing solutions for your organisation, please do get in touch on Talentum. I look forward to hearing from you. #recruitmentmatters