Does Recruitment Age You or Keep You Young? 🤔👶👴

If you’ve been keeping an eye on the blog or are a client/candidate trying to get hold of me this week, you know I’ve had my mum over. My old dear has actually been staying at Casa De Burnett recently which has been great! Counter to what would expect when moving thousands of miles from home, I treasure spending time with the olds. Especially now, as it is a buzzy thing seeing your parent hold your child for the first time. There are downsides, I’ve had my wife calling me “Sthcott” ever since my mum let slip that apparently when I was little, I had a lisp, completely unbeknownst to me. Another thing that has me thinking about the passage of time is this Friday is Island Recruitments' 1st Birthday! It’s a period in my life that has simultaneously gone by quickly yet when I think back to the first few weeks, it seems longer than a year ago. Recruitment has a funny way of distorting time. Go to any recruitment meme page and you will see something similar to that I’ve no doubt stuck as the cover image for this blog but does recruitment actually age you?

Starting with the obvious, recruitment is stressful. We’re selling both a product and a service and when the product has free will, a soul and you pray, a conscience, it can move in very unpredictable ways. Also, the performance of the said product is completely out of your control and previous abilities waxed lyrical about could’ve been embellished or even totally fictionalized. Like old age, acute stress can be the reason behind grey hair. If you’ve been in this industry a while you know some recruitment horror stories and might even have a couple yourself that you can quietly usher with a face illuminated by torchlight. You are under pressure from the get-go and people react to pressure in different ways. What I will say is that although recruitment comes with some lofty expectations, the recognition you receive on your journey up the ladder is reminiscent of your younger days. The box of beer, shiny new title or arvo galivanting isn’t too dissimilar to the first pick of the toy box or a wee badge for your blazer. Those ‘attaboys’ are frequent in recruitment, and I would argue remind us of our youth.

Time is a curious thing in the recruitment game and as I’ve mentioned, can be distorted. I think it’s because we view time on such a micro level. We break down our days into core hours to work more effectively. Recruitment years can feel like dog years because of this. A recruitment year is the same as anyone else’s, but those 12 months are full of countless ups and downs that certainly add emotional miles to the internal odometer, in a way that no other job does. A good example of this skewed time is when you are waiting for an answer from a candidate or a call from a client. The key is to have a few deals on the line at the same time, that multiplier helps jolt the timeline back into its normal cadence. The relentless pursuit of utilizing time can give the impression of slowing it down. On the other hand, the state of your desk can dramatically change in the space of an afternoon. So you can forgive consultants for thinking more time has passed than actually has.

From time to time, I hear that recruitment is a young man’s game. When I do, I immediately set up a campaign to dox, SWAT, or cancel that individual to smithereens for not using the correct adage of young person. I for one think that Brendan Rodgers should be tarred and feathered for this week's antics. There’s no denying the average age of the industry is kind of low which when discussing weekend plans can make one feel old. You’re talking about Bunnings and they’re talking about bunda. To show the blog is done live, Lewis Koumas has just scored for Liverpool and some will remember his dad Jason playing. It’s the circle of life but I like to have the attitude of the mum from Mean Girls, those kids keep us young. We’re reminded about our early days because we see it unfold in front of us. The ups and downs they experience are the same ones you did at the start of your career.

Life just like recruitment is all about perspective. You can be a moaning old’yin in your early 20’s or a pushing 60 and full of life. There are perks to getting old in recruitment like in life; think of your gold hop card like those extra annual leave days. You tend to work smarter and have the benefit of learning from mistakes. I think I’m going to come down on the side of recruitment keeping you youthful! Which has absolutely nothing to do with my Birthday coming up on March 13th.