During my time at ASG International as a Recruiter in the Retail Marketing Industry filling both On and Offline roles I had quite a nice CV to Placement Ratio of around 2.7:1, I was very picky about who I worked with and made sure that they really suited both the clients’ office personality as well as skills they were looking for. I never had a drop out or a counter offer or a did not show for interview; a mixture of really following the process plus working with excellent professionals meant I had it pretty smooth.
Fast forward to moving into the Recruitment2Recruitment Industry as a Consultant and it’s a completely different ball game. I was very naïve thinking that because I was working with like-minded people in the same job there would be much more transparency, openness and just general courtesy; how wrong I was. I used to see people moaning about recruiters without ever really knowing why, ASG and Quad’s recruiters have always done what was right for the candidate, staying ethical.
In the past 7 weeks since starting back I’ve had:
Recruiters getting offers but accepting another offer elsewhere after swearing blind all the way through the process they weren’t interviewing elsewhere
Candidates who had extreme desire and genuine reasons for leaving their current position as well as recruiters applying through job ads, agree to interviews, take interview preparation and then not show at interviews without even telling me (then ignoring all calls and correspondence)
Setting Terms with a new client for them to backdoor me for a candidate because they used to work with a person from their office a few years ago thus advising they were in contact with said candidate – (the candidate told me explicitly that they were in no processes and stated the company was a firm they would love to work for), any attempts to contact the candidate were futile after this. I hold my hands up to this and now always make sure to get candidate declarations each and every time.
Candidates cancelling interviews due to illness after the interview being booked around a day off because they decided to get hammered the night before (I have a works Snapchat as a marketing tool and have some candidates on there; thus seeing all the drunken Snapchats..)
Recruitment is a learning curve every single day and I am by no means anywhere near the finished article, I have reflected on every placement or every non-placement and wondered what I’d do differently; however, when a person or a company acts unprofessionally all the preparation and process management in the world can’t help that.
On the other side I have worked with some wonderful candidates who were extremely open and transparent, provided billing history for where they were interviewing without a problem to prove their pedigree, constant contact at all points, no games with salary expectations and advised of any other interviews with regular updates. Everything you could ask for as a recruiter really. Also 99% the clients I have worked with have been very understanding and open, providing good strong feedback for candidates and generally painting a clear picture on what they’re looking for.
In short I wasn’t prepared for how ‘flaky’ some of the candidates I have spoken to were going to be, luckily I have been blessed to work with clients who very much understand so it hasn’t made me look as bad to the client as I’ve felt when people have just fell off the map without so much as a “goodbye”. I completely understand that this is the minority and there are lots of candidates I have spoken to that haven’t gone into a process due to being open about not having an interest in that particular opportunity.
I feel that sometimes people in the Recruitment industry forget that a Rec2Rec consultant is literally doing the exact same job as they are; so you are going to be a candidate please act in a manner that you’d wish candidates to conduct themselves whilst in a process with you. Be open about interviews you’re in or jobs you may have applied for; we can then give a full picture to our clients about your current situation. There is no worse feeling than getting started on a process to go back to a client with a total curveball or saying you can’t get hold of the candidate anymore; thus making the Rec2Rec look incompetent.
