idealpeople blog

This is one for any fellow Recruiters out there who flick through/read Recruiter magazine. We’ve grown a particular fondness for their “Diary of…” Section, normally on the inside back page.

This feature is written by a different Recruitment Consultant every month, and allows them to give a diarised version of their week in their job. We love it because it’s always written by a Consultant who seems to have nothing but incredibly positive weeks, usually punctuated by at least 15 placements, lots of very succesful client meetings, a customary mention of some fancy wine (probably trying to convey an image of wine expertise) and (this month) share allocations in light of their incredible success. Frankly, we don’t believe a word of them, so we thought we’d write our own version. Here goes:

Monday
Came into the office at 7am, only to realise we’d had a power cut over the weekend and the servers had crashed. Couldn’t get hold of our IT Support team until 8.45am, so spent an hour and a half wishing I’d had a lie-in. Headhunted a candidate for a £90K Technical Architect role (which I’d spent the whole of Friday qualifying extensively with the client to ensure I could sell the opportunity correctly). After a long technical interview (which had been pre-agreed with the client), I was convinced we didn’t need to search any more as we had the perfect candidate. I immediately phoned the client, only to be told they’d already received the candidate’s details from another agency. This was something of a surprise, given that the candidate had never heard of the client before I spoke to him. Became engaged a lengthy candidate-ownership battle with this other agency, which I eventually won. Phoned the candidate to tell him the good news about the interview I’d finally managed to arrange, only to discover that he had become so disillusioned by the phone calls he’d had from this other agency who - it turns out - had sent his details to every technology company in the UK without his consent that he’d decided to leave the IT profession for good and move into Property Development.

Tuesday
Discovered today that a £16K placement I made last month had fallen out and the whole fee had to be rebated. Apparently, the candidate loved working for the company, and they loved him…but there wasn’t enough room for him to “swing his bat”. Honestly. Spent the rest of the day fending off sales calls from recruitment jobsites offering free trials and sifting through hundreds of irrelevant job applications from people who had gone to Monster and ticked “apply to every job in the world, all at once”.

Wednesday
Spent all morning in a meeting with a client at our offices and agreed and exclusive deal to supply them with a J2EE Server-side architect. They were looking to fill a C++ Mobile OS Architect role as well, but had other agencies on it at terrible margins. Located a dream candidate by 4pm, having networked my way through half of the technology industry to find him. Spoke to the client, and it turned out that some other agent had sent his details over for the Mobile Architect role, which he was completely wrong for. Now the client are interviewing him and probably going to offer him the “exclusive” J2EE role. Another client called just before home-time: I’ve worked with them for 6 years and provided outstanding service and made almost 70 placements - they thanked me for my hard work but said they’d just installed an RPO company as part of cost-cutting measure. The RPO company called and said we’d have to halve our rates to carry on suppliyng the client. Don’t think I’ll bother.

Thursday
It’s not turning out to be a great week. A candidate I got an offer for last week has just had the offer recinded at the referencing stage: apparently, after leaving his job, he put his former company on eBay for £1, and now my client (rightly) don’t want him. Spent the rest of the afternoon trying to re-establish contact with clients and prospects I hadn’t spoken to in a while. I phoned one company where I’d arranged an interview for a Senior Management position for a really great candidate 3 months ago (they rejected the candidate, but seemed to like me before it went cold) - and was surprised to hear the candidate who had been “rejected” answer the phone. Looks like they hired him after all, but didn’t tell me. I checked my records and it turned out they never signed an agreement with us, so there was no way we could invoice them. £10K fee down the drain.

Friday
A good start to the day (three interview requests) was followed by a good client meeting. There were other agents at the meeting - one in particular stood out as he was some 20 minutes late - but at least he bought doughnuts. The day soured a bit towards the end - a client called to say they’d got rid of a candidate I’d placed because he’d refused to shave off his beard (they work in a clean ennvironment, and it was a condition of his employment). One of the candidates attending the interviews I’d set up pulled out because of an unfortunate accident involving a bird soiling her suit as she walked up the steps into the client’s office. A tough end to the day.

A much more accurate picture of life in the fast-lane, don’t you think?