Stop Hitting Your Head Against The Wall

I received a call from an executive leader of a company a few months ago. He wanted to enlist my help on a couple of searches that his organization was having trouble filling.

These were not highly complex roles to fill by any means, but given the tightness of the marketplace, finding the right people and keeping them beyond a year is proving to be a challenge.

My kickoff call went well, but ultimately, discussions stopped there.

I was told during the call that they had a few recruitment partners that were working with on the searches, but for reasons unclear to me, they were not able to successfully fill their positions.

Essentially, they wanted to add me as another recruiter since I was known to one of their executives in the company, under the pretense that more eyes on a search means greater odds of a successful outcome.

I challenged the train of thought by suggesting that perhaps your approach to date is not working and maybe you should try something different.

I realized today that most business leaders are afraid of change, and they are wired to engage in the same behaviour hoping that somehow circumstances will work out differently in the future. I think by definition you can call that insanity, yet most people are okay to remain in this state and this has somehow translated to be what’s best for business. It's like repeatedly hitting your head against the wall and complaining about your headache.

We are okay to have multiple recruiters working on a given search at the same time, yet we employ the services of one mechanic if our car needs an oil change or one law firm if we are being sued. I’ve never heard anyone say that they were going to use multiple surgeons to remove their gallbladder to increase the chances of a successful operation. Yet, this has become the dominate thought related to recruitment and then we wonder why positions are taking longer to fill and hires don’t make it past the first year of employment.

Let’s try something different.