| Humans are animals and animal behaviour is hard | | | | the race and it’s a big fat |
| wired and mostly predictable. One behaviour in | | | | nothing.That’s the first hard wired, predictable |
| particular: People always choose the easiest way to | | | | behaviour. The second is the bit that seems to baffle |
| get what they need. Which doesn’t mean our | | | | many employers and HR managers.None of the 3 |
| needs can’t be complex or irrational or | | | | recruiters will invest the 3 to 4 days of hard work to |
| altruistic. Just that given a choice we always choose | | | | dig out some high hanging, quality fruit as they have |
| the easiest path.Now job seekers who have had 40 | | | | only about a 20% chance of getting paid for their |
| unreturned phone calls would argue, but recruiters are | | | | efforts.Why just 20%? Because after a week of |
| human beings. They will find and choose the easiest | | | | talking to candidates, other agencies have heard of |
| path to make the money to feed their kids and to | | | | the role, and they have talked to some other low |
| support their favourite charity.The point of this Rant | | | | hangers. And because there is sometimes an internal |
| is to look at the way most employers work with | | | | candidate who gets the job or perhaps the position is |
| recruiters: They brief 3 recruiters for the same | | | | restructured.As pointed out in last week’s |
| job.What the recruiters then do is totally predictable: | | | | Rant, any experienced recruiter can dig out |
| All 3 focus on the low hanging fruit, the active job | | | | candidates if they put the time in. Predictably they |
| seekers who are doing the rounds of recruiters and | | | | won’t bother if you brief more than one firm. |
| applying to ALL the online job ads. They are easy to | | | | Would you in their shoes? Employers think they are |
| find, and each firm races to put ads up so they can | | | | testing the full market’ or keeping the |
| find them first. The screening can be quite | | | | recruiters honest’.No. Just predictably not |
| perfunctory as the race is to get their resumes in | | | | getting value. And wasting a lot of their time looking |
| first.Why is it predictable that they do this? They are | | | | at candidates who only barely match the brief but |
| all on contingent fees, so get your agency brand | | | | have been put forward because the agency wants |
| onto the person who is hired and it is $20000, lose | | | | that $20000. |