Recently I was made redundant in my previous recruiting role. After fighting all the emotions a redundancy brings I am finally back on the hunt and making it my full time job to find a job. For an excellent post on the redundancy roller coaster check out this Firebrand blog.
Anyway as I was saying I am on the fulltime hunt, which consists of tweaking my resume, phone calls, tweaking my resume, interviews, tweaking my resume, research, oh did I mention tweaking my resume? Anyway we all know what it’s like, relentless hours spent on one job and at times you feel it’s all for nothing. As many recruiters would know the market right now is flat, I’m talking as flat as the tyres on my bike I got for Christmas last year which resides in the shed and has never been ridden type of flat. And what this post is really about, and what is frustrating the hell out of me right now in this market is the amount of recruiters I have contacted and they cease to call me back. News flash picking up the phone is not that hard, I know your not swamped with work right now, so what’s your excuse? Well??
Honestly I just don’t get it. Number one, I could be the candidate of your dreams and because you couldn’t be bothered to call me, you lost that. Number two I get you don’t have any jobs right now, but isn’t it still worth a conversation. You never know the relationship we could build, perhaps you could place me at a later date. What happened to the long term view of recruitment?
I know you hear it all the time but seriously recruiters it’s all about the conversation (maybe it was just drummed in to me from my last manager, Dan Nuroo, you can read his latest thoughts here). OK, so you may have no jobs for me, but be honest and have a chat to me about the market and what I am looking for. You never know when that will pay off. I know what won’t pay off, suddenly when the market does turn and candidates hold all the power the recruiters that didn’t ring back will all of a sudden be begging for you to take their call and perhaps then when you need me the most I won’t bother answering you. Or what about when I do land the internal role I am looking for and I become your customer, I have the buying power. I know first hand you don’t go above and beyond so I surely won’t bother to call you back.
It takes you a couple of minutes to pick up the phone and have a conversation, you never know what’s in it for you, now or in the future, just return the call.
As my good friend Pete would say. Rant officially over.
amandacommander 