Can we recruiter-bash ourselves for a moment? Embarrassing incidents from an Agency recruiter's career

For the last six months I've seen an almost daily avalanche of what has been deemed 'recruiter bashing' on this platform between my comrades in recruitment agencies, candidates and in-house recruiters.

To lighten things up a little, I'm sharing some of my embarrassing moments from my (nearly) 9 years in agency recruitment. Every one of us in our professional career has made some mistakes (whether we admit it or not, it's part of the journey and how we grow) and I think it's about time we poke a little fun at each other and stop taking ourselves so seriously.

So here goes with three of my favourites... !

Indecent exposure

I kickstarted my career in Brook Street's Social Care division, running a high volume temp desk placing education and care professionals. Part of the job was supporting private nurseries in London to find Nursery Nurses at short notice to cover when theirs called in sick or because of a spike in demand.

That meant every evening establishing which of my temps were available for work the next day so that we were ready to respond at short notice to urgent staffing needs.

One morning back in 2009 a nursery client of mine needed immediate help. Standard procedure was to text (through our system) all qualified staff who said they were available and those with the fastest response time who were local to the client would get booked in.

So out went the text... "If you're available for a shift in a nursery between 8.30am-4.30pm please call Ben @ Brook Street"

Only in my early morning, hazy state I'd missed out the letter 'f' in shift and having hit send, this had been delivered to 40 nursery nurses in London.

"If you're available for a shit in a nursery between 8.30am-4.30pm please call Ben @ Brook Street"

Hilarity ensues as our office (including my manager at the time) takes phone call after phone call from bemused ladies. Given the nature of the work we did, all communication was tracked and non-editable in the system so it remained as a permanent feature in the Brook Street database which my colleagues at the time found great joy in screenshotting and circulating internally!

Plotting something sinister

I launched my search firm Lawson Chase in February 2012 but was bound by heavy restrictive covenants from my previous employer that lasted for six months and stopped me from working in the industry for a while. Once that 6 month period had elapsed, the item at the top of my agenda was to build some meaningful relationships with clients I wanted to work with & represent in the market.

I'd been promised a meeting with the Head of Talent Acquisition at a top ten banking group in London - a big win for a start up recruitment firm and an important pitch for 22 year old me. We'd agreed on the phone to carve out some time to meet on Friday of the same week and I pinged over a follow up on email the next day to see if we could schedule something into our diaries.

Subject: Friday

Message: Should we put something in the dairy? Ben

Trusty spellcheck unfortunately didn't save me from my mishap and I had unwittingly suggested sabotaging the UK's fast-moving consumer goods market in a seemingly sinister plot.

Needless to say, it didn't sour the relationship and we had some fun to-ing and fro-ing about how my plans didn't really fit with the bank's global HR policy.

More Bridget Jones than sexy-time

Rewinding to my early career in Brook Street Social Care, here is a real face-palm moment for you.

I was 19 and had about a year of recruitment experience under my belt. My position at Brook Street was heavily sales focused (in my first 30 minutes on the job I was sat next to my manager and told to call 10 prospective clients whilst he listened through another receiver - a fancy bit of kit that was actually pretty invaluable for training)

There was a potential client that I really wanted to work with called Stonewall Housing. For those of you who don't know about their outstanding work, they support the LGBT community and frequently work with some of the most vulnerable in society. As a young, gay man their mission was close to my heart.

I called their Operations Director in London to pitch me and our services - he was an incredibly busy fellow who did indeed use recruitment firms but was harassed on a daily basis by recruiters who wanted to support Stonewall. He wrapped up our very brief chat by saying...

"I'm too busy to meet you. The only shot you would have at a meeting with me at the moment is if you bought me a Maserati"

At that point I could have given up but anyone who has cut their teeth in agency recruitment will tell you, resilience & tenacity are traits that are needed in abundance if you want to be successful.

Brianwave. At the time I was working at Brook Street's Wood Green (London) branch which is close to a pretty sizeable shopping centre. Inside of it could be found a toy shop of replica cars and trains. Whilst the Ops Director's "buy me a Maserati" comment was clearly tongue-in-cheek, I had nothing to lose by giving this a go.

So I purchased a relatively cheap, toy model of a Maserati and racked up at Stonewall Housing. I got my hour long meeting by thinking outside the box & showing some guts and the rest, as they say, is history.

Our first booking came through from Stonewall Housing within 24 hours. Their specialist accommodation support services were in need of a Housing Officer to work with a particularly vulnerable transgender individual who had suffered from domestic violence and substance misuse. It was up to me to find an outreach worker who had the experience, skill set and personable traits needed to make a meaningful impact in this service user's life.

I settled on a lady who'd been with Brook Street as a social work contractor for several years - let's call her Mrs A. There wasn't a case she hadn't seen and she was a trusted expert and a steady pair of hands who would do a good job for my new client. I confirmed her for an immediate start.

The day after her first shift, I was in the office at an ungodly hour. Anxiously wanting to know how things had gone with my new client, I called her for a debrief. Here was her response:

"Never mind how my first day went, what are you doing working so early?"

We had a good chat for a few minutes about recruitment being a meritocracy environment, my career goals, the nature of the 'early bird catches the worm' reality in temporary recruitment etc. Then she said something that completely blew my mind...

"Well with all of these hours you're putting in, I hope you get SEXY TIME"

Mrs A was in her late 40's, well spoken and an absolute delight to be around - this was a pretty out of character comment to make. We'd known each other for about a year and met multiple times - I thought perhaps we'd crossed that professional threshold where we could just be 'real' with each other. After all, I thought, she's only asking whether my working hours impeded on my love life. Already too much time had passed in awkward silence & I blurted out...

"Yes darling, of course I get sexy time!"

-------------------------------- the phone line had gone dead. Absolutely baffled, I sat there for a few minutes head-in-hands thinking of the exchange I'd just had. Then it struck me... what she'd actually said was "I hope you get flexi-time" !

Hopefully that has given some of my recruitment peers a giggle! I'd love to hear any of your entertaining recruitment stories so please feel free to share your own experiences in the comments.