Parasites, leeches and recruiters.
Type “recruiters are…” into the information gargantuan that is Google and it seems that recruiters aka headhunters aka talent acquisition specialists are held in lower esteem than the lowest of Dalits.
No other industry except perhaps real estate (oft churned around in the same saliva ball) brings up such vitriolic bile. Think questionable ethics, underhand practices, fast cars, shiny suits, booze, drugs and the big S.
Changing jobs is one of the most intense emotional investments you can make. A typical hiring process will continually tug away at your heart strings, every high a sip of Perrier-Jouet Belle Epoque (replace with your celebratory tipple of choice), every low another nick of the rusty blunt razor.
Now consider you’re merely a pawn on a chessboard, pushed around at will in some unpredictable, high-stakes, winner-takes-all game for the commercial gain of others.
A dear friend has spent the last six months searching for a new role. She’s been to hell and back and met enough modern-day incarnations of Lucifer to last a lifetime. She finally landed her dream role — hurrah! But it was a brutal slog. The scary thing is that she is brilliant. A top performer. An A player. A purple squirrel. What hope for us mere grey squirrels then?
We were humbled to act as confidantes. “What does this mean?” “What does that mean?” “My recruiter didn’t call me when they said they would, should I worry?” — Not necessarily, though it doesn’t make it right. “My recruiter doesn’t know anything about the interviewer, should I worry?” — Yes.
Ask about the typical candidate experience and most will say there is a lack of humanity, compassion, empathy and good ol’ basic understanding. Some might throw integrity and trust into that mix too.
Here at Mongoose Gray we don’t always get it right every time either. But we do try. We genuinely care. We endeavour to champion client and candidate interests ahead of commercial gain as hopefully anyone who has dealt with us will attest. We were clients once. We were candidates once.
What’s more as former software engineers and system architects we’ve performed first-hand many of the roles we now recruit for. Hopefully this means we’ve got at least half an idea of what we’re talking about.
Recruitment is actually a surprisingly inexact science. A lot of stars need to line up for that warm body to be sitting in that vacant seat come Monday morning. And it only takes one of them to fall away for everything to go Pete Tong.
Are you so fed up that you’re considering doing your own hiring? Don’t. It’s incredibly frustrating and time-consuming.
And as for all those new, shiny, all-singing all-dancing so-called automated recruitment solutions which promise to deliver you the perfect candidate straight into your inbox? With just a mere few clicks of your smartphone?
Psst! they don’t work. As a one-off sure but it’s likely to be a fluke and not repeatable. Are you really willing to play roulette with your critical hiring?
Ultimately it’s a people business and always will be. And people respond best to conversations. We have them all the time. Perhaps it’s time you had one too. Get in touch: +44 (0) 203 701 1217.
MONGOOSE GRAY | Recruitment. Consulting. Support. As IT should be.™
MONGOOSE JOBS | Blissfully bijou.™
