Does my bum look big in this industry?

I love this time of year. The wind and the rain are still room temp and if it wasn’t for the sporadic showers, you’d be forgiven for thinking we were winding down Summer. Another good thing about this time of year is that it is the furthest point from beach season. If you’re going to pack it on this is a good time to do it. With a pregnant wife at home, I’ve discovered that weight/size is merely a concept. A metric that can and should be, totally ignored. You’re never supposed to ask a woman her age or weight, which is what makes bungee jumping so thrilling, they write everyone’s weight on their hands! The other lady in my life has also gone through some what of a transformation in recent times, Ol Lady Recruitment. In truth, the old girl has been on a bit of a yo-yo.

We’ve all been there. You’ve been tagged in a post from the other night. But this can’t be right? It would appear as if another larger person has ate the carefully maintained self-image I had of myself? Unbeknownst to you, you’ve been creeping up the scales. You didn’t know a pint was a loaf of bread, or that bread may as well be lard. This was the recruitment industry the morning of the first lockdown. Covid motivated/forced the industry to shed pounds like it was invited to an imminent school reunion. As the weeks marched on in lockdown we were getting progress pics in the form of new job notifications on LinkedIn from former recruiters. The last thing down the gullet was the first thing out the back unfortunately, a lost generation of recruiters were sweated away as if the industry was cycling in a sauna. Especially candidate managers.

As a market that is constantly candidate short, the smart money was always to bet on candidate managers. But, thanks to covid a resourcing capacity was viewed as a luxury. They weren’t completely cut but a compromise was reached. Consultants were expected to find their own candidates. It’s sort of like still getting Uber Eats but walking to the chippie to pick it up. The industry was lean, posing with it’s old jeans on, a downwards thumb in the waistline emphasizing the dramatic loss of CMs and Consultants alike. Changes had to be made, it’s not like they were going to amputate a foot if we didn’t clean our act up but if we kept going the way we were, recruitment would’ve needed two seats on an airplane.

One of the changes made was quite fundamental in how we operate. You see back in the day, it seemed as if everyone was trained as a 360 consultant. You learn the candidate stuff first and then they let you lose on clients. However, the demand for so long has been to find candidates for the many many roles we had live. Agencies shifted to a 270/90 role that saw teams of candidate managers supporting one or two BDMs. Which worked well because all you need to do was dangle a compendium out the window and upon reeling it back in you would have 3 or 4 job briefs bursting from its zips. The market also had a plethora of available talent and with a lot of people cut just due to circumstances, you wanted as many rods in the pond as possible.

Inevitably, the treats start to creep in again. A drunken late night Maccas is followed by a morning McMuffin delivered to your side door. We’re not slipping all the way back but there is a bit of a puku showing. The problem is that the market has shifted, there aren’t as many jobs to go after as before. This has caused the industry to step it up a gear, waking up at the crack of dawn for that F45 fix. It’s in training mode, specifically sales training. Because the demand has been on resourcing and not BD we’re finding that some consultants aren’t equipped to deal with push backs, objection handling or even just checking the temperature. It’s putting the tooth paste back in the tube to a degree. You’ll have recruiters with a couple of years tenure, having to sit through training with the newbies on how best to do this new job.

The industry can still take pleasure whenever a class year book is unearthed, “no way that’s you!?” gasped in disbelief as we see the stark contrast. Instead of the goal being weight loss like it has been in the past. I would say that she’s currently training. It’s doing sales squats, core (hours) strengthening, Yog…etonthephone. It feels as if we are returning back to how things used to be before the Vid. Recruitment is essentially sales and I think not knowing the sales side of it takes away the sweet from the science.