It’s Christmas day, several years ago and I am speaking with a very senior client. In fact, I had to call his home phone to which a bemused wife answered initially.
A fantastic colleague of mine had received an offer for a very senior candidate. The candidate, lets call him Bob, sounded happy with the verbal offer so I was having a great conversation about Bob’s future with client. Happy holidays!
Later that day however, Bob called back. “Look, I heard that my friend Jim is going to be offered a similar role at the company but he will be earning double the money they offered me”.
Right, ok. “So you would like me to tell them that, although I had said yesterday, you were happy with their already, very generous offer, you’ve changed your mind and want double that?”
“Yes please”
*ring ring* “hyellowa”
“Oh Hi Mrs Smith, can I speak with Mr Smith again please”
Mr Smith comes to the phone again. *explain the situation*
Now, what do you think Mr Smith’s reaction is? Do you think he’s annoyed with the candiidate or me?
This actually happens quite often and it can go either way. On this happy holiday though, we joyfully covered both possibilities. He was livid with both the candidate and myself. For completely justifiable reasons. He would now need to go back to his boss, cap in hand and ask for quite a bit more money or risk losing the candidate and having absolutely nothing to show for the last 6 months of work it has taken to find this person.
In his mind, either I was being a greedy recruiter, or the candidate was greedy and/or not the right “culture fit”.
Either way, it is incumbent on the experienced recruiter to fall on their sword and blame themselves for the “confusion”. Why? Because we cannot afford for the client-candidiate relationship to break down.
Begrudgingly Bob does get the salary requested. Mr Smith however walks away thinking that I haven’t done my homework, don’t have a good enough relationship with the candidate and I’m just a greedy recruiter.
What this client doesn’t know though is that it is actually in my interest to annoy as few people as possible because I am in this for the long term. Running to the bank with a few extra dollars now, is pointless if we never work with that company or candidate ever again.
Everyone is looking for someone to blame and often it is the barer of bad news, the middle woman or man that bares the brunt of this. Despite the 60 hour+ work weeks, relentlessness, resilience, drive and passion we put in consistently. Not to mention all of the thinking about different scenarios and lost sleep outside of those hours.
Fortunately we have thick skin and the longer in the industry, the easier it is to deal with these things. There are of course some sharks out there, but for those who work hard, stay in the industry for the long term and are passionate about what they do, they are worth their weight in gold.
