I’ve recently come across numerous articles and updates on LinkedIn calling out recruiters for poor practices, bad or outright rude behaviour. It’s comical when the usual suspects jump on the comments trying to justify some of the more ridiculous practices. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe all LinkedIn updates calling out recruiters are correct but on most I shake my head, think to myself how is this still happening, who’s training these people and then crack on making a difference. Now I’m not talking about the ones that are human errors, genuine mistakes or even juniors that don’t know better. Overall, I feel we should at least listen to our audience, see if we need to adapt and if so, look into how we can prevent this happening again i.e. moving forward.
“A smart man learns by his mistakes, a wise man learns from the mistakes of others.”
That being said, I’ve recently noticed a comment that “all recruitment is broken”. This was from someone who uses recruiters to hire people into their business and that comment couldn’t be further from the truth. Yes, not every single recruitment business out there is great and let’s be frank, there are some pretty poor ones, but that’s the same in every industry. Vodafone is publicly getting a kicking at the moment with a £4.6 million fine for allegedly having poor customer service. Does that mean every phone company is the same?….maybe a bad example ;). I’ve also seen comments about automating all recruitment practices making them redundant “The Recruitment Industry to die in 2018”. I believe Zeynep Tufekci put it best in her latest TED talk (see here); where Zeynep talks about the issues when using automating hiring systems and how taking away the human element could cause huge, unforeseen issues.
"We cannot outsource our moral responsibilities to machines, we must hold on ever tighter to human values and human ethics."
What a lot of people don’t realise is that most recruiters know the value of recruiters and use recruiters to recruit recruiters…..Wow, that’s a lot of recruiters! If you genuinely hate recruiters (I know a few) I’d suggest never moving into rec to rec.
So why do recruiters use recruiters, you may well ask? We know recruitment is about RELATIONSHIPS and recruiters who specialise solely in this field will naturally have a better network of PEOPLE, therefore improving their odds of acquiring a suitable person. Additionally, we only have to pay recruiters when they have been successful; it’s a free service until they find someone! Recruiters know that PEOPLE are the main reason why a business succeeds or fails and we want to increase our odds of hiring the best PEOPLE by using rec to rec’s, no brainer right?
So IF you’re feeling ALL recruitment is broken, chances are you’re just not using it properly. Those that think this way often adhere to the old adage, “you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink”. Regardless of what you think you can do to change a person’s mind-set in this situation, you’re very unlikely to win because they will continue to think that recruitment is broken; taking ZERO responsibility that they could actually be the thing stopping it from working in the first place.
There are however people out there who DO want to change. I’ve recently started working with a new client who has been struggling to find 3 different & difficult IT positions despite using 3 recruiters and using the businesses standard recruitment process. Upon approaching them, they felt that the recruitment process is broken and they just wanted to send me over a job specification for the different positions. I asked them to change their process for the positions/roles, to trust me and meet me tomorrow to discuss further. They were open to change as luckily it’s a business that has been recommended to speak to me as they’ve struggled, so they listened. On 1 role they went from receiving 36 cv’s, booking only 4 interviews (3 candidates dropped out), 0 placements over a 4 month period using their last process to 5 cv’s, 5 interviews and 1 offer in 3 weeks from using mine.
How can that be? Surely all recruiters are the same? Where did I deliver when the other 3 recruiters failed? Luck? I’d love to say I delivered over and above other recruiters because I’ve been born with a natural talent and I’m known within the industry as the Clark Kent of recruitment because of my speed and physique, but that’s not the case. Hard work, a respect for other people and listening are some of the minimum requirements. I delivered because the recruitment business was open to changing a broken system!
Maxwell Bond has been created because we believe that people matter and we believe in doing everything in our power to ensure we make a difference to people’s lives. We do this by hiring the right people; enabling them to
