As a headhunter or corporate recruiter you live a career that resembles a roller coaster ride. Those of us who are in the business of helping clients and hiring managers, to find candidates they can't find themselves, are indeed lied to, cheated and manipulated.
There are of course also good days, there are many good days in fact. When a recruiter gets a super candidate into the process and finishes the search with a signed employment agreement, we celebrate. The roller coast is at its peak.
Then we have days where it turns out that the MBA on the resume was actually not completed, or when the candidate merged two employment periods with two different companies into one period and one company - but now gets caught in a reference check.
We have lows when the candidate has signed the employment agreement, but calls a few days later to say he will not join anyway (took the counter offer), or a candidate who starts in a new job and only weeks into the new employment resigns.
I wonder if lie detectors will become part of recruitment one day? Oh well.
In recruitment you are going to be lied to, cheated, mocked, berated, manipulated and forced to face devastating setbacks as an agency or corporate recruiter. You’ll work long, hard hours and make positive achievement announcements to people and companies which you’ll have to retract as a result of other people’s behaviour. You’ll listen to people, learn all you can about them, hone your skill-set over years and finally build trust only to have it dashed again and again; but this is the game. Depend on competencies, use a framework, take notes and don’t let senior candidates intimidate you. It’s the arrogant ones you need to give special attention to. They’ll duck and dive, pretend they are far too important for this inane conversation and look everywhere but at you. Learn how to watch body language.
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