Old Rush

I love Halloween! I get a real Christmas-level buzz out of doing the house up and eagerly awaiting the neighborhood kids in my jarg IT The Clown costume from Look Sharp. Us recruiters can trace our roots back to this night as for most of us, it was our first exposure to cold calling. Going up to an unknown and potentially spooky prospect with the hope of getting something you want. I tend to wait until the second knock on the door to surprise/scare the sh*t outta unsuspecting Princess Elsa and baby Batman. It’s a night when kids can be whatever they want and adults get to act like kids. I’m a fan of a holiday that makes people feel young as we have enough reminders about how old we’re all getting. I got married the other week and instinctively shaved my beard and now I’m sporting a grown man’s mustache. People keep telling me I’m a man now and maybe that’s because I look like an 80’s dad or your art teacher from primary school. Thankfully, I work in an office where I am the second youngest out of five. Like when Darth trapped Han in the carbonite, the years go by and I’m still the same age as when I entered the business. Others aren’t so lucky.

I was talking to a consultant this week and they had a familiar reason for being open to new opportunities. Not as tried and tested as the ol faithful hot buttons of flexibility, progression, and money-making potential, but it’s still something I hear now and then. They began “Scott, I’m 30 now. I’m too old for this environment” There was no need to tell them I was 3 years their senior because I got it. They worked for one of the larger agencies in the market. By nature, the larger agencies are able to hire younger more nubile consultants as they have the resources and manpower in order to train them up. As a product of this process, I can attest that it works. This isn’t to say that smaller organisations can’t hire would-be consultants that are young, dumb, and full of fun. It’s just that with homogenized training modules shared across multiple offices, across countries, they have the infrastructure capable of incubating associates and turning them into fully fledged rec cons. I did however feel for this consultant. A few years out of the 27 club and already feeling like a geriatric, when comparatively I still feel like a young pup. It had me thinking, is recruitment a young person’s game?

I tend to think that 23/24 is the perfect time to get into recruitment. You’ve already done some awful jobs so you know what a good one looks like. Plus, you’re mouldable enough to be thoroughly conditioned. The problem with getting into recruitment at a later stage is you’ve probably had a career before and in a lot of cases, those roles won’t have a commission component. Which makes base salary expectations slightly higher. Back in my day $45K was the going rate for someone joining the industry. That number sits at $55K - $60K now and if someone has come from a sales background you can expect $65K. The benefit to joining when young is that you have very few outgoings or dependants that rely on your monthly pay slip. Employers know this too and will often offset the lower salary to the time and resources spent in training them. There are other perceived benefits from an employer’s perspective too.

The impact on culture for example. Recruitment gets a bit of a bad shake for being a bit boozy, that image has subsided a tad from the bad ol days. Saying that I still think the preference is for team drinks rather than celebratory sound baths/floatation tanks. Youngsters tend to have remarkable bouncebackability, something that dwindles the older you get. Hangovers soon become three-day affairs which can have an obvious impact on delivery. Even take my first Pow Wow 6 years ago and the impending PW on the 8th of December, nowadays the following Friday is largely unproductive (tickets available here btw) I tend to hear that consultants in the swansong of their twenties don’t want to get ‘lit’ on a Tuesday night. Furthermore, they don’t want to be made to feel like a leper for not chipping in on the group fishbowl. To have another Carey Bradshaw moment, where I lean back and bust out a silly soliloquy; “We are taught never to be ageist, but is our own industry ageist?”

Tenure in this industry is nothing to be sniffed at. It takes resilience and a hearty work ethic in order to ride the waves of these turbulent seas. Seasoned vets usually come with a well-defined personal brand and a network of candidates and clients. Being on the wrong side of 30 I obviously have a horse in this race but so do business owners. Bridging the gap between the senior and associate consultants is always going to be difficult and when it comes to retention it is crucial to get that right. I understand it from the Senior Consultants position though, the insinuation that you are ‘boring’ for not falling out of Family Bar adorned in feather boas at 5 am is a slight annoyance. When you have a shift in focus from beer crates to mortgage rates you want to be in like-minded company, you can still go out and enjoy yourself and there’s no shame in calling it at 9pm to get the train. Your age doesn't have an impact on how you feel or recruit however, your environment may. For more musings on getting older in a youthful industry, ask the elder in your office or Snapchat ya boi Scotty B ??????

This blog originally featured on the?Rice Consulting Whiteboard