You Make Your Own Luck
“You make your own luck”
I remember the first time I heard this phrase.
It was during a run of lost deals, candidates going south and billing falling out – something that had been going on for months. My morale and motivation were low – thoughts such as “this is out of my control” and “how is this my fault” kept running through my head. Even “it’s not fair”, “this is all down to luck! In addition, the even more insidious –“I can’t do this” kept popping up.
This is known as a “rut”, where you have to “dig yourself out of the sh*t as my Manager used to tell us. This is easier for somebody who isn’t in a rut to tell you than to actually execute.
This idea that my situation was as a consequence of luck, being in a rut through no fault of my own – clients not recruiting, candidates not doing as they were supposed to, budgets being pulled, companies going bust – how could I control these things? It just WAS NOT FAIR!
It took me a long time to break this mind-set, literally years. It happens to the best of recruiters when they start. Unless you are blessed (as some people are), with continual success from the outset, all recruiters will have experienced “the rut”.
The hardened and experienced recruiter will recognise this and take appropriate action and so “make their own luck”. Those not in sales or in recruitment may wonder what on earth this means, after all luck is not tangible. It is a strange concept, you cannot really have good luck but then again you can. Luck does exist because some people are indeed lucky but it is more a case of chance, of statistics and odds.
Therein lies the point – how do you increase your luck? How do you put the odds in your favour?
Through statistics!! By statistics, what I refer to is numbers, figures, KPIs. The process of recruitment is often referred to as “a numbers game” – put in the numbers and you can win, you can improve your luck and your chances.
The more cold calls you make, the chances are the more vacancies you will get. The more candidates you speak to, the greater the pool of talent you have to recruit for. The more clients you meet, the more repeat business you get and so on and so forth – and so you are actually “making your own luck”.
Don’t get me wrong, over long periods of time the tenacity and perseverance to do this consistently does indeed require you to “dig deep”. Further, it can trying to keep up that numbers game in the face of resistance and hardship.
A specific example comes to mind: A fresh new recruit was tasked with a new sector and new area for the office and being new to recruitment this was quite the challenge.
There was a particular large household name client that was preffed to the max and felt like they would be completely impenetrable. After months of hard graft, cold calls and rejection, the new consultant not only got a job on, got good candidates over, got an offer and an acceptance.
It was then that “the powers that be” intervened from the vendor and HR that this was not allowed and the consultant should not be going direct to line managers and it could not place. This would dishearten most people – actually, I have known a number of people quit in such a scenario, but this guy put the phone down on the bad news. Picked up the phone and dialled another fresh client, got hung up on and the kept dialing – banging out the calls, until eventually he got a fresh vacancy and filled it. Tenacity, perseverance and numbers made this guy lucky – this actually wasn’t me by the way.
In point, luck is intangible, a concept, something that doesn’t truly exist.
Can you get lucky? Yes
Can you be more certain in being lucky by creating your own luck? 100%