The Bad Recruiter

My history is full of short jobs that I did for fun. Most of them never made it to my resume. It was only once I started working as a sourcing executive for an MNC, in the US process, that I actually stuck to the job. I liked it.

There is no other job that makes you feel both like a King and a beggar, all on the same day.

My work was to find suitable resume in job boards with the needed skills, call them to check if they were interested and share resume with the recruiter to take forward. It was the time of global economic meltdown. People were losing jobs left, right and centre. So, most people were glad for the call. Some left hate messages, but such instances were few and far between.

Since it was a night job, it took a toll on my health, and I moved to a day job in the same industry as a Recruiter–big mistake!

There is no other job that makes you feel both like a call centre employee and a beggar, both on the same day.

Recruitment is often advertised as Human Resources job. In reality, it is double marketing. You sell man to job and job to man. I was never a salesperson.

It was a head-hunting company. My job was to:

1. hunt for suitable candidates who were best in the industry, AND
2. make sure that they reached the interview venue, AND
3. ensure they joined the job.

I hardly went beyond first base, and never beyond second.

First Base: Nearly everyone on the job board had been contacted and rejected. It required cold calling at least 80 people before I could get one good candidate ready to go for interview. My upper limit was 30 calls. I was never the one to pick phone calls at home. My possible suitors would call my home number only to find my parents on the line. That’s why I never had a boyfriend until I got my own mobile phone. It was against my inherent nature to call unsolicited.

W, who was doing well in the same industry told me a trick. It required extensive lying. You call a junior in the target company in the same department, offer them a position that does not exist. Once you have their confidence, you ask them for help to fill another position, which is really the one you are recruiting for. You ask them to refer seniors for the position, and once you have the details, you put the guy on back burner. A great trick for someone who could lie. I am a terrible liar. I have memory of a goldfish, and am afraid that I won’t remember what lie I told and to whom. I might stop mid-sentence to remember what I was saying.

Another way is creating a Linked In network, which may take months, and looking up people on Facebook. I hate Facebook AND Linked In.

So I hardly crossed the first base.

Second Base: I thought sending people for interview was just about sending a reminder message. Apparently, it was about judging whether the person was lying about being late.

I am a gullible person who believes in the universal goodness of human beings. I trusted people when they said they were interested in the job; that they are on their way for the interview; that they met an accident on the way; that they had a death in the family. I openly gave them second chances and third. But as the death toll rose and the accident numbers became higher than the city’s population, I had to admit, I was missing something.

Third base: After one year in one organisation and five months in another, not a single person joined the job. I reached the ocean floor of depression, where I stayed drowning in sorrow of my own making. I couldn’t believe another human being without questions. I was never into cigarettes, alcohol or drugs, else, the time was ripe for the next remake of Devdas*.

That’s when I quit the industry for good, and moved into Learning. It is one place where I help people by teaching essential job skills and, hence, delay their next interaction with the Good Recruiter.

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Author’s note: This story is off the record. So, if you are my manager or had ever been one, this post never existed.