by John Dunaway
A funny thing happened to me not so long ago. A new client, who
I was meeting for the first time, introduced himself with the
assertion that he couldn’t stand recruitment companies or
recruitment consultants.
Capitalising on my middle management status, I retorted: “that’s
ok, because I’m a recruitment manager”, which turned out to be a
decent icebreaker, and seems to have laid a solid foundation for
what is becoming a fruitful business partnership. And he gave me
nice biscuits with my tea.
It got me thinking about the perception of recruiters generally.
I could swear there was a time when this negative perception of
recruitment people was so rife, so received, so prefabricated, that
in my early days in the industry I assumed that “bloody recruitment
consultants” was a bona fide job title - perhaps for niche medical
recruiters.
Now, I’ve no doubt that our industry name is still taken in vain
on a regular basis – but is it me, or is that view finally,
thankfully, starting to seem just a little archaic? Perhaps it’s
just that my clients feel they are getting a good service at a good
price.
I’ll elaborate slightly. When I first started out in trades and
labour recruitment, ooh, about 10 years ago, my presence on
construction sites elicited the whole gamut of salutations, from
cups of tea to honest and unapologetic profanity. Regardless of
whether I was generally welcomed or cheerfully told where to go,
there was a common view that recruitment consultancies (or
‘agencies’ as they were more commonly known) were blagging an
order, over-promising and under-delivering and then, to rub salt in
the wound, not taking responsibility for their actions. My
authorship of this article, by the way, will hopefully be
admissible as evidence that I was, and did, none of these
things.
Fast forward ten years or so, and the industry is much better
regulated. The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC)
accreditation means that good recruitment organisations do things
properly and professionally, delivering high standards set by an
official, self-regulating body.
The REC itself is steering my profession towards the chartered
status that accountants, marketers and a host of other
professionals enjoy. If you don’t work in recruitment, I can assure
you that the REC’s qualifications are demanding, with the explicit
purpose of fostering high standards.
My organisation is an Investor in People, too. A core tenet of
our approach to staff development is that if you look after your
staff, they will look after your clients. Advanced Resource
Managers won the Institute of Recruitment Professionals’ first ever
award for People Development at the end of last year, after a
sustained campaign of Learning and Development programmes designed
to arm our staff with the skills they needed to flourish in a tough
economic climate.
Once again, our customers benefit – they get to work with
professional and well-informed, skilled professionals. I could go
on about what we do to ensure our workforce is skilled and
motivated, but this is supposed to be a think piece about the
professionalising of the recruitment industry, not the company I’ve
been with for the last six years or so.
So if I can leave you with a lasting thought, it is that every
negative experience can be a positive learning opportunity, (even
when it’s just you being wrongly lumped in with others, or being
guilty of doing the same to others). Rejection is useful feedback,
every objection is a merely a hurdle, and converting non-believers
creates the best relationships you’ll ever have. So next time you
meet with a business partner, check for biscuits. It’s amazing what
bridges can be built over a nice coffee and a few chocolate
digestives.