Welcome to the Weekend..... Importance of Promise v Delivery

There is a connection between new employee and Recruiter, whether you are Agency or internal, I don't think it makes a lot of difference (akin to the bird who forms a connection with the first thing it sees out of the egg, the Recruiter is THE goto person in the initial stages of employment in most cases as there is a relationship).

This works well if everything in the employment stakes goes swimmingly.. however, if say, there is a redundancy (or more than one) to someone you were able to convince to leave a job, and take yours, 6 months to a year after they start. I know this could be in bad taste with the amount of redundancies happening at the moment, however this scenario will have to have a negative effect to your personal brand. Is this a fair assessment? and if it is how can you curb it, especially if you work in a niche area?

Another scenario... you have a requirement, you qualify, qualify, qualify, you get THE right candidate... the candidate goes through an exhaustive process.... and you find out at the 11th hour... no more budget. (I have seen this scenario a lot over my career, but I am convinced there could be more of it now)

You advertise on a job board, you get your 100 responses.. only to find out that the role has been pulled.

Each one of these scenarios will affect the perception of YOU from the candidate, and perhaps with the employer as well. As the driver of the process, the buck will stop with you...

Personal Brands will become more and more important as Social Media really takes hold. People will (and already can) find you on countless mediums online, blogs, online communities, twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, MySpace etc etc etc... people will say good and bad things about you and your company.. if you are constantly going through any of the above 3 examples it may have a negative affect on your Brand.

This is where common sense needs to come in... the simple fact is that as the Recruiter you have to Manage expectations on all sides. If you do this openly, honestly and in a timely manner things should be fine... Hey I get guilty of not getting back to some people when I say I will, but life gets busy right?

Honestly... not good enough, I should know better.... and here's why...

Once upon a time..... in a land not that very far away......I was a young Consultant in my first ever gig, I joined a team of 5 looking after one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) IT Contracts in the country.. they had just won a huge deal to outsource all the IT development with the largest Telco in Australia. This was going to be the land of milk and honey.. everyone will blow budgets away, it was a coup for my company to get on the panel.. we had over 200 open reqs a any one time across Contract and Permanent roles, life was flat out, life was fun... success will bring that. However, one day I get into the office to find out that all 4 of my other team members (incl leaders etc) had resigned.. leaving me holding the baby as it were. (insert first ever stress freakout here)

I knew the account, I knew the people... but it was just me... 23 years old running the largest account the company had... This surprisingly raised a number of eye brows with the client. the words "We are your largest account... why do you have some kid running it? Aren't we important enough to warrant someone of experience and standing" We were part of a competitive panel of 7 agencies, all getting the same work.. we were ranked in the lower half....

This is where I learnt something... of those hundreds of requirements the client didn't expect us to fill every single one.. however the expected us to report to them what they wanted reported and the wanted constant feedback. They needed feedback, good or bad, for the closing date of every requisition. I made a decision there and then... I was going to focus on delivering on our expectations, even if it meant that I would call the procurement or HR people and say I had no one for that role, and it looks unlikely that there would be. I was amazed at the kudos that bought me, within 6 months we became the number one supplier. All because i believe, that we listened to what they wanted, we delivered on personal undertakings and built strong one on one relationships and worked those relationships to expand our knowledge and inside client knowledge.

My point? Deliver on what you say you will, (don't under promise - over deliver) you will gain respect from clients and candidate alike.... and that is what we are after in this industry. This business we are in, whilst challenging, is not Rocket science.

The dangers of under delivery are shown below :)




This was going to be a short little rant.. I seem to have been caught up in it... thanks for reading!