Can’t stand recruiters? That’s so yesterday. (Isn’t it?)

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.

Share / Bookmark Subscribe to this post's comments using RSS