Make Sure Recruiters Never Forget You
We all meet certain people in this world who leave an indelible impression on our lives. They will often be fairly unremarkable individuals, but for some reason, they carve a permanent little place in our minds for themselves. They have the gift of stealing the moment and possessing our mind for those short seconds. There may be many ways to describe this, but I would describe it as impact.
The opportunities to allow someone like this to gently “rock your world” come along far more often than we think, but we are often too self-absorbed in our own worlds to notice. How often have you been sipping a coffee in a café, checking social media when for some reason you have paused to look around? You wonder what people are talking about, what makes them tick and maybe even take a guess as to what is in their heads. For a moment, your life is not longer about you. You are being present for others, and in this state, you are far more likely to feel (and remember) the impact of those around you.
A good recruiter is permanently open to the impact of others.
A recruiter’s job is to figure out why a certain individual would thrive in a certain organisation. Some would argue that a machine can do the basic matching of CVs and job descriptions, but machines cannot estimate someone’s impact. An executive can walk into the room, and you get a “feel” as to whether they would be a good fit for the job. There is no guesswork involved here, and it is the result of finely tuned judgment and the cumulative effect of tens of thousands of different “impacts” over their career. If a recruiter thinks about nothing else but the candidate, they can’t help but be impacted, and many of these impacts will stay with them forever.
The best recruiters want to remember you, but they will only do this if you are open and true to yourself when you meet them. For some reason, people who are playing a role tend to be instantly forgotten. Something deep down recognises that what they say and how they act doesn’t ring true. The problem with the recruitment process is that you only have an hour to make an authentic impact on someone, who has never met you before. Nerves get in the way, stumbling explanations of your past successes mask who you are now, and before you know it you are hearing those fateful words “we’ll let you know.”
How many times have you walked out of interviews thinking that it could have gone better? You feel that you didn’t give of your best and that the interviewer may not have understood you as well as they might have done. You didn’t make the desired impact because you weren’t yourself for whatever reason.
Recruitment only works when candidates are honest about what they can offer, and companies are (brutally) honest about what the role entails. This takes some interpretation, but that is why our clients work with us.