Why search?

I’ve lived and worked through four, or is it five, recessions now and have seen how the continual advancement of technology has changed the way that whole recruitment market works. I vividly remember a postal strike in the 80’s which meant that a client gave us permission to fax CV’s across rather than post them! And yet today we and certainly our younger consultants live in the electronic age where email or blackberry rules the roost. In fact we had to explain to a mid twenties consultant what a fax was. The thought of trying to explain what a telex machine was to him, was one explanation too many.

It’s a fact that whatever you do for a living your job has changed dramatically over the last few years. To me, Sunday morning is a mug of coffee, toast and The Sunday Times. Five years ago the appointments pages were a heavy two sections. These days it’s a few pages and mainly public sector appointments. So, why such a significant change?

In my view the reasons are simple and fundamental to the success of any recruitment project. Recruiting the right person in these challenging economic times has become ever more important and many more companies realise that advertisements are here today and in the recycle bin tomorrow.

True story: I was retained to recruit a senior Director for a client and about the eighth candidate that I spoke to got the job. However, during our first, second, third and probably fourth conversation he told me to me that he was very happy where he was. The fact that a couple of other candidates recommended him kept pushing me back to talk with him. Two months after the first conversation he finally agreed to meet me for a chat over a cup of coffee and two weeks later he resigned from his company and now works for my client.

If the client had advertised, he would have skipped the advert and my client wouldn’t have recruited the star that they did. Search is about persistence, about fine tuning your process and above all it’s about cherry picking the best candidates that meet the brief.