They call me The Seeker
“I’ve looked under chairs.
I’ve looked under tables.
I’ve tried to find the key.
to fifty million fables. “
(The Seeker, Pete Townshend 1970)
Recruitment can be a simple job, says Stephen Rutherford, managing director for Michael Page Technology. Buy your way onto a preferred supplier list at Megabank Inc (a wholly owned subsidiary of the UK taxpayer) with some knock-down rates, log into the latest ‘free’, ‘market-leading’ or ‘cutting-edge’ job board, and start firing CV’s down the pipe.
Thank goodness this isn’t the norm in the industry, and my experience over the last few years running Michael Page’s IT division has done nothing to shake my faith that the majority of great companies want great recruiters to find great people for them. The Back Bedroom Branch of IT Recruiters ’R’ Us (owned, managed, staffed and administrated by Curt Goldtooth in his PJs), has made the odd fee here and there, by changing a candidate’s CV to exactly match the job description of an unsuspecting (and gullible) client. But not at companies who value their staff, and the people who find them.
Standards of professionalism, as are applied to the client, are still high in my sector. What does perplex me, however, is why service to candidates has eroded in IT recruitment. Some of this might be the economy, and equally it might also be due to advances in technology, but my belief is that a top class candidate is top class in any market. In a recession they are even more so - they are the only candidate I’m likely to make a fee from! Seeking out opportunities for top candidates is as important as filling jobs. Consequently my teams of consultants meet hundreds of business technology candidates every week.
So, as an IT candidate facing the unusual prospect of meeting a recruitment consultant at the start of your search, (rather than in the client’s car park just prior to starting a new job to photocopy your passport!), what preparation should you do? There are all the obvious things that will be expected – punctuality, decent shirt/tie combo, no pens in your shirt pocket – but what else?
The most important things to think through thoroughly are your reasons for wanting to look for a new role, and what this new role might look like. Candidates frequently wonder why their motives for leaving their current job, and their boss’ reaction when they do, are probed so heavily by professional recruiters and headhunters.
It’s because you lie to us.
Ok, not all of you do, but there is a very significant minority who, like the heroine of some US teen drama kissing the footie captain so RPatz gets jealous, can’t face the prospect of asking their boss why they’re still doing 1st line support 30 years after joining the company. So they decide it’s easier to pitch up at our door looking for an extra 500 quid and a seat closer to the window. We fall for this fable. We work hard to find the right role for them, and our clients commit time to meeting them and producing an offer, only to be told that their employer loves them all over again and they’re staying put.
This is a real low point of our job, not just because of the loss of revenue and face with our client, but also because we feel like mugs. We’ve been had!
Taking my tongue out of my cheek, and assuming that you are genuinely looking like the vast majority of our candidates, there is another very important reason why you should tell us why you’re moving on. It will better inform us of what best to look at for you. “What’s wrong with your current job?” is another way of asking what we should look for in your new role.
Lots of candidates have very tightly defined (sometimes overly so) search criteria and this does make life clearer (if not necessarily easier) for us. “So you want to be England football manager, Harry? We’ll see what happens, but you might have to wait a while.” However, the vast majority of candidates pitch up at our door with pretty ill defined motivations for moving.
Most job seekers fall into one of three categories – all of which we can help and do help every day – but all of which would be easier to help with some better preparation on their side.
Firstly we have “Fluffy isn’t feeling well”; the candidate who comes to us with absolutely no idea why they want to leave or what they’re looking for. They can be very senior, very good and very well paid, but in every respect they resemble a five year old taking their poorly bunny to the vet. “He’s not eating his lettuce and looks sad”, translates forty years later into “It’s just time to move”, “I’ve learned everything I can”, “My analyst says change is good”, etc, etc.
There’s no real reason why we can’t help a candidate like this, but they need to expect some questioning as to their true motivations. Largely this is because we want to prepare them for an audience (and interviewer) who doesn’t want to hire a five year old bunny lover, but a hard headed CIO who’s going to ramp up their technological capability. The other reason is that this is the reason for leaving most often given by CIOs who have been caught emerging out of the stock cupboard with the intern. Do candidate registrations surge in January because of New Year’s resolutions or Christmas Party indiscretions?
The second type of applicant is ‘Paris Hilton visits the hairdressers’. You’re great. You’re at the top of your profession. You walk into the doors of Michael Page Technology and say “create something marvellous for me Vidal”. Flexibility sounds like a virtue when a job seeker approaches an agency, but some clear thought as to why you are moving on will always be better than “I’m just tired of the status quo”, “I want a challenge”, “I want to add value/ give something back/ feel valued”. Virtually any job can fulfil these criteria for the right job seeker, and hence Paris will be challenged (hard). Otherwise its just empty words, (to go with Ms.Hilton’s empty head).
Finally we have Jerry Maguire; most often encountered in the interim development community. “Show me the money” they shout (or email, usually, as they don’t like to be out on the streets in daylight). In commoditised areas of IT recruitment, normally avoided at all costs by me, this type of candidate is actually pretty easy – get the day rate they want and they’ll do virtually anything. However, very very professional business technology candidates walk through my door with nothing better defined than what Garth from the Java team has told them to say. “I’m worth at least £250k”. Reason?, “I’m two years older than the CEO, can understand how to work his Blackberry better than he can and have a better top score on Angry Birds”.
I am genuinely being flippant now, as in the senior permanent market I rarely meet many candidates as punchy as this about money. Often, as well brought up boys and girls, they are almost reticent to the part of diffidence about discussing their financial aspirations. It’s important that they do this, and we do it with them, as candidates whose financial aspirations waver, upwards or downwards during a recruitment exercise lose credibility, and this rarely results in a happy outcome. Having said all this, recruitment consultants frequently overplay the part that salary plays in a candidate’s decision making process. (Probably because in many recruitment firms, fee income is the sole determinant of a consultant’s worth to the business and his or her remuneration package). In fact, particularly with senior candidates, salary is only one contributing factor to a career choice, with many other factors in play.
These will tend to be a combination of hard factors (money, package benefits, location, etc) and soft factors (culture, brand, development opportunity, personal chemistry, etc). The hard factors tend to determine which jobs a candidate applies to and gets shortlisted for and are, hence, very important. You should expect to discuss all of these with your consultant and be prepared, in a sense, to negotiate. A determination to work ten minutes from home might involve reduced remuneration. Equally, geographical flexibility may well secure and improved salary or daily rate.
Good recruiters will want to talk about the soft factors too. This is because they will determine which candidates actually get offered jobs and accept them. Hard factors get you through the door; soft factors determine whether you stay there. Senior IT candidates often find this kind of stuff bewildering. “I can use Oracle 149.6, why does the HR director want to know what my personal brand proposition is?” The reality is that an increasing number of customers now expect their senior IT team to exhibit the same values as their other senior people. Technical expertise just isn’t enough. The values and ideals of the organisation need to be matched by those of its CIO, and the CIO needs to get on with their boss.
Recruiters will have a number of tools in their armoury to get an appreciation of where the candidate sitting in front of them will most feel ‘at home’. Lots of this can be done by asking historical questions about former firms and line managers, but we also ask aspirational questions. What motivates you? Where are you trying to get in your career? Describe your ideal job? These are the really important questions as most job seekers make their decisions based on emotion and only use hard logic to back the decision.
You should emerge tired from a meeting with a decent professional recruiter. Your technical expertise will have been probed, your commercial acumen analysed, but you also should have been put through the ringer as to your reasons for leaving and your search criteria. Finding the right role for the best candidates is as integral to my job as filling vacancies, and it’s also a damned sight more satisfying.
I’ve no interest in being The Seeker.
I want to be The Finder.
