The Roller Coaster Ride That Is Recruitment Jobs
By: Jonathan Walker
If you've been in recruitment jobs for some time you'll know that it's not the most of consistent pursuits you'll ever find. Indeed for even the most successful of recruitment consultants, filling recruitment jobs consistently is like trying to find the end of the rainbow. Consequently, you need to equip yourself mentally to handle the constant ups and downs that accompany jobs in recruitment.
There are many triggers which may cause a 'recruitment storm'. Some of these can be generated by the recruitment consultant themselves, such as distractions from outside of work, perhaps boredom or even complacency are some of the more obvious. Or, the cause may be more external and beyond your control, such as new competitors in your market or other market changes, or perhaps changes in the companies recruitment advertising spend. Either way, a downturn on your results, even if on the grand scale of things is normal, can be quite devastating and demoralising.
As a result, the most successful recruitment consultants are the ones who are able to continue to do all the things that they know they should when the going gets bumpy, even though the recruitment world seems like a bad place to be. There are a number of things you can do to attempt to escape the storm as quickly as possible.
Firstly, you need to accept the fact that ups and downs, sometimes severe ones, are normal in most recruitment jobs. Indeed, providing you keep your head, a down will always be followed by an up before too long.
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To avoid the mental meltdown that can cripple remind yourself that a storm is normal and refocus on the mechanics of your job. Target the number of vacancies you wish to maintain, the number of candidates you would like to source for each, the number of interviews you want to achieve and stick to your task as you have done before. Keep reminding yourself that the sun 'will' always come out again after a storm if you just stay focused on the task in front of you.
Once you have weathered your storm, always take time to look back an analyse events. It may be that the causes were indeed outside of your control. If however, you can identify some internal causes, may changes to your practice's to try and avoid on a future occasion. In my experience as a recruitment manager, the difference between a good recruitment consultant and a really good consultant, is often their ability to minimise the impact of a recruitment storm and return to the task. the more human among us allow things to pull us down for a little longer than is actually necessary.
To apply a sporting analogy, they often say that it's the team who can win when they play badly who will be the best champions.
