By Mark Evarts, Tomahawk Recruitment, June 27, 2019
#bestrecruitment #tomahawkrecruitment #recruiterswhocare
I recently caught up with an ex-colleague who said recruiters are like the used car salesmen of the 80s & 90s: sleazy, underhanded, full of BS and all about the sale. In fact, he relayed an incident where he reluctantly introduced his own brother’s recruitment agency to his business partner, and within a number of weeks that agency tried to poach his staff. He called his brother and asked, wtf? His brother’s response was simply, ‘What do you expect? We’re recruiters’.
I was ashamed but had to agree with him. The industry is renowned for underhanded operators, and sadly, that’s been my personal experience of recruiters as well. Recruiting has become about sales. Sales that generate the revenue required to furbish expansive overheads.
However, I was also a little excited. Excited by the opportunity to show him and others that there are also good operators - recruiters who genuinely care.
It’s time to have a look at why we became recruiters in the first place. Maybe it was that we had an interest in helping people find jobs. Maybe we had a talent for rifling through CVs, or maybe we just fell into it. Whatever the reason, we’re here to place great people into great jobs.
We have an opportunity to transform this industry by genuinely caring and providing true service. As a recruiter, it's your job to provide genuine value to both your clients AND your candidates. We love calling successful candidates but often those unsuccessful souls are treated with far less respect. Job hunting is often a scary prospect so have a heart, use it as an opportunity to provide value to another person, operate from integrity and I promise you, you will feel like a better person.
I’m reminded of the quote from Nita Ambani, ‘The lotus comes from the murkiest water but grows into the purest thing’.
As recruiters, we have an opportunity to be the lotus and rise above the perception of our industry.
Be the best recruiter you can be. Go on, I dare you.