A Melodic Review of a Recruitment Bygone Year

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…

 

I find it is a great opportunity to reflect on all aspects of your recruitment year just passed:

• The successes and achievements
• The failures and learning curves made from them
• Your sales/revenue achieved, versus targets
• Clients gained and lost – reasons why

Oh Come all ye faithful

 

Taking each of those points- successes and achievements clearly include strong billing, biggest fees and incredible candidates placed. Think about what you have overcome in a process.

Some of my biggest successes this year has been placing really key people into entrepreneurial owner managed businesses, who have very quickly become such an important part of the fabric of that business that it feels like poetry. I can think of at least a dozen senior placements this year who have since become senior decision makers I have gone on to place with. That is the true recruitment life cycle in my opinion where candidate and client become one as your customer.

Practise what you preach and faithfully work the winning formula each time, if you can!

Stop the Cavalry

 

The failures in recruitment are usually epitomised by candidates not getting the offers they had hoped for, for clients being disappointed by their ideal candidates being counter offered. All these are situations that every recruiter, nay employer, faces at some time. And the key point to note is that lessons are learned.

What could have been done to avoid these failures? Better understanding at the start of the process of salary expectations and informing the client of this? Probing the motivations of the candidate’s desire to move to anticipate the counter offer?
Teaching you to suck eggs is not the purpose of my blogs, I promise, however, sometimes you need to STOP and go back to basics and ensure you learn from each process that did not result in success.

My own personal “failures” this year have included the above scenarios and being in R2R, it may surprise you to read that this does happen- it shocks me when it does as my candidate/client management is something I pride myself on – however I still take stock when these rare occurrences happen and ensure I learn with the other “wounded” party in what we could have done differently.

Fairytale of New York

 

So you/your boss/employer set a financial target at the start of the year. Hopefully you use key ratios as kpis to work backwards from there. With monthly appraisals and reviews weekly of your progress and with MOST markets in full recovery, most recruiters should be achieving consistent performances now if these targets set were realistic and fair.

I have overachieved on my financial target by 50% this year. Which I am obviously delighted about. However, you will be shocked to hear that when I hit my yearly goal by July, I did not sit back on my laurels, I kept on pushing and doing the good bits and focused on over achieving. This is the fairytale part where you know every solid placement you make is profit and a true delight!

KPIs are not there to bash people over the head with. I measure myself on ratios. I achieved placement ratios of 1:1.7 which I know is exceptional, I am a “sniper” in how I operate though, working mainly with exclusive highly experienced people and clearly working SMARTLY with them rather than a “scatter gun” approach. My trade secrets revealed…. My Christmas present to you….

Last Christmas

 

Mr Retrospective negotiator, unethical/immoral client/candidate, I gave you my heart but the very next day, you gave it away…. If you have clients who have shown they are not true partners, if they lack any integrity- renegotiating, going behind your back, as two prime examples: now is the time to draw the line and as you devise your strategic business plan for next year, do not partner these people going forward.

Equally, which clients HAVE become true partners to you- even if you have not yet placed with them, focus on how you can build on this relationship next year; set key milestones, arrange to meet up f2f quarterly.

This is a perfect time of year to reflect on what has worked and… what hasn’t. Recruitment is not a perfect science though as we all know, we are dealing with fellow human beings, so things change, circumstances alter- for either party involved; people change their minds!

My Christmas wish for recruitment is for us all to remember that our moral obligation is to maintain integrity at all times, to be honest to all individuals- to show empathy and compassion. To offer the best customer experience that we can and ultimately, do unto others….

I will leave you with one my favourite Christmas songs of all time and rather apt for what is going on in the world at the moment….

Happy Xmas (War Is Over)

 

I hope you have enjoyed the click throughs to the songs chosen above to put you all in a Christmas spirit, go and grab a Gluwhein, a mince pie and sit back and enjoy.

Thank you this year for your likes, RT, shares, comments and support. I look forward to seeing you all in the New Year! Be safe.

[Image Credit: Shutterstock]