The Great Hurdle Race (otherwsie known as Recruiting)

I’ve been working in the recruitment industry now for several years and I love the challenge and fulfilment I get from helping candidates and clients. However, it does feel like I’m constantly in a hurdle race as there are so many fences to jump before you get to that final finish line. Let me tell you what I mean by ‘hurdles’.

Hurdle No. 1 – Engaging with clients

This is probably the most difficult hurdle of all. As we well know, contingency recruitment means that if we don’t place, we don’t earn. So, engaging with clients is an important hurdle to jump. Once you have your clients on board, you can breathe a little sigh of relief, (but only for a nanosecond) and this leads you on to hurdle no. 2.

Skills required: Sales, marketing, networking, tenacity, patience, and a little bit of luck. ??

 Hurdle No. 2 – Finding Nemo (sorry, I mean candidates)

Yes, it does sometimes feel like we are searching the entire ocean to find those golden nugget candidates. We have all the recruitment technology the world has to offer yet, there are still candidates hidden under coral reefs that only come out during full moons and tsunamis. These are the hidden gems that we must find to satisfy our clients demand. Not an impossible task, but a lot of candidates need to be sifted through before we find ‘the one’.

Skills required: A lot of time, patience, phone calls, emails, and hope.

Hurdle No. 3 – Selling your job to the candidate

Sorry guys, but recruitment still requires sales skills. No matter how you dress it up, we are sales people at heart. Selling our skills and experience to our clients and selling our clients job roles to the candidates. So begins hurdle no. 3, if your job isn’t interesting and engaging to the candidate, they are not going to be interested in being put in front of the client.

Skills required: Sales, persuasion, time, patience and possibly a prayer or two.

Hurdle No. 4 – The waiting game (sometimes known as ‘the black hole’)

So, you’ve survived hurdles no. 1, 2 & 3 and you’re racing ahead to hurdle no. 4. You’ve found 3 or 4 great candidates for your client, you’ve gained permission to send their CV’s and you have stayed late in the office to prepare your email to the client. So, within the next 24-48 hours you should have a phone call or email back from your client saying thank you for the great CV’s and dates that they would like to conduct interviews, right? 

No, not always ……. this is often where the black hole appears. It can sometimes take days, weeks or possibly longer for the client to come back with feedback on the CV’s, (due to a great number of reasons that are usually unavoidable). Sadly though, this is where both you and the client can lose those ‘golden nuggets’ as they can be snapped up by your clients’ competitors, or simply just got bored and turned off by having to wait so long for your client (and subsequently you), to get back to them. So back to the drawing board you go to source new candidates.

Skills required: A heap load of patience!

Hurdle No. 5 – The interview

Your client has come back to you on the CVs and wants to arrange interviews with your candidates. This truly is a wahoo moment, so you call the candidates. First candidate - voice mail, so you leave a message, send them an email followed by an urgent text message to get in touch. Eventually they call and the interview is arranged and with luck, they turn up on the day and the interview goes well.

Skills required: Another heap load of patience

Hurdle No. 6 – The offer

So, the interview went well from both sides and the client wants to make an offer to your ‘golden nugget’. Which is turned down ……. as they’ve suddenly decided that the upper limit the client is prepared to pay for the role (and which has been offered), isn’t going to be enough to entice them away from their current role. 

Skills required: A lot of black coffee drinking

Hurdle No. 7 – The negotiation period

“Hey Mr Client, I’ve got great news, Candidate X is really pleased that you’ve made them an offer, but they would like another ￡2k on top of your upper salary limit. It’s so good that you’re experiencing their negotiation skills prior to him joining the team isn’t it?!” This is a real bang head on the table moment. If you’re lucky, your client will meet somewhere half way or play around with the guarantees or benefits package, but if you’re unlucky this could be a real deal breaker and all parties lose out.

Skills required: Negotiation, tactfulness, a lot of head banging and finger crossing

Hurdle No. 8 – The resignation

So, the offer is accepted, the salary negotiation is complete and the candidate is now the proud owner of the written offer. So, it’s time for them to resign from their current role. They say they are doing this on Monday morning when their line manager is back in the office. Monday morning at 10am you call the candidate to see if everything is ok, but get their voice mail. You email them but get no reply. The following morning you get a call to say that their current company have made them a counter offer and they are seriously giving this some consideration – yet another strong coffee and head banging moment. So, you have no choice but to wait patiently for their decision.

Skills required: Patience, patience, patience and some more patience

Hurdle No. 9 – The acceptance and confirmed start date

Hurrah, the candidate rejected the counter offer from their current employer and has accepted the new job, but needs to move the start date as they forgot about the hospital appointment they have on the agreed start date …..

Skills required: Some more patience

Hurdle No. 10 – The starting day

After all the previous hurdles you’ve had to face, you still have a final one to jump. Checking your candidate in on their first day. So, as you make that call with crossed fingers, it’s the best news in the world when your client confirms that yes, your candidate has arrived and is sitting safely at their new desk. 

Well if you’ve managed to read to the end of this article and can relate to most of what I’ve written, you are obviously a recruiter. A recruiter that jumps through hurdles and is happy to do so as the end result is so rewarding. I will never stop getting a buzz from recruitment no matter how many hurdles I encounter.