The Lean Team

Oh, to be a fair-weather recruiter. I was almost blown away getting off the bus this morning, but the blog marches on. Like most days, you’ll find me plugging away on the 17th floor of the PWC tower however, the plugging has been like pulling teeth recently. The readership knows I’ll always attempt to find the silver lining even in the mushroom cloud. But let’s call a spade a spade, it’s not only the weather that’s grim. Towards the end of last year, we were emboldened by the talk of thriving in 25. Then the new year arrived, and there was a collective understanding that once Waitangi Day had passed, the decision-makers would return from their baches and make decisions. We’re now 17 days into a new financial year, and the promise of a bustling marketplace is starting to look a little less likely. However, it’s not only the job front that is looking a little sparse.

I recently took a brief for a newish client. I think they knew what they were doing when they told me that they had also approached a now ever-growing number of rec-to-recs. As I don’t have a lot of internal competition here at Island, it’s nice to feel like you’re going up against someone. As recruiters, we’re naturally competitive, and I’ve always held the same view of any competition. I hold them in high regard, viewing them as very good at what they do. As soon as you start feeling otherwise, that’s when levels drop. This led me to staying back late on a Friday, missing bath time, not my own, but my son's. I went back to the basics, pen and paper, tallying up approaches like days on the wall in solitary confinement. The search is ongoing after 60+ messages. This may sound disheartening, but I was thankful to the client. Without them, I wouldn’t have touched the walls of the industry and gotten an idea of the candidate pool's depth. The brief was rather specific, but still, I was surprised by how lean the industry had become.

The waves of redundancies have come to an end for now, but the result of multiple rounds of restructuring is clear to see. The recruitment industry has never been leaner. If that’s true for our industry, then it must be true for every industry. The candidate pool recruiters are facing is shallow, and clients' expectations have never been higher. It’s a twofer; candidates are risk-averse, and any movement must represent a significant uptick in money, flexibility, and progression. For any client justifying a recruitment fee, the candidate must not only have A, B, and C, but they also require D, E, and F. I don’t know what it’s like in other industries, but we’re not seeing anything like the level of newbies entering the agency world. This is because they can’t provide a history of BD or billing. Two things that are an absolute must in today's market. We’re no longer seeing droves of overseas candidates either, with the government insisting that agencies are accredited, clients are understandably standoffish about hiring anyone with a firm exit date. Candidates who have effectively survived the rapture feel honoured to still be employed. So when opportunity knocks, the inclination is to turn off the lights, turn down the telly, and pretend you're not home.

This all sounds a little defeatist, but as any recruitment savant will tell you, if the market were awash with jobs and candidates, then we wouldn’t be needed. I know that everyone points to the lack of jobs as the problem, but the other side of the coin is just as concerning. To go a bit Gump, the candidate market is like a Jenga tower. Heaps of blocks have been removed, ascended out of view, and won’t be relevant for a while. This means the blocks that are left available to our shaky hands require a little more finesse and cajoling before they can be gently placed elsewhere. It’s not impossible, I’m personally a big fan of when you see a clip of someone nonchalantly firing out a block with ninja-like accuracy. As an optimist, I run the risk of blurring the lines into naivety. You just have to play what’s in front of you and turn over as many rocks as possible. Also, I'm not advocating for punching candidates, I'm aware of how the following GIF could be interpreted. 😅