Even A Falloff Can’t Take My Kodachrome Away

I intentionally slept in for the good news. Offer is in. Fifteen minute celebration. “Kodachrome,” my good news song. Two cigarettes. Huge cup of coffee. Back to work. Close deals.

We all celebrate in different ways. This was my way of celebrating. I had just hit $75K in billing for the month of January. Then I had to figure out how to squeeze out another $25K. I had one more interview that looked promising. I have to hit $1 million in 2014. I repeat: I have to hit $1 million in 2014. No more excuses. I clipped $240K for the last quarter in 2013. I must keep up the pace, running fast with no time to slow down.

Who says recruiting is easy? After 18 years in the business, not much has changed. I work differently now with new tools and better IT, which help increase candidate flow and track marketing prospects, but strip these things away, and recruiting is the same. I get the job order, find a candidate, present, interview, offer candidate job, and candidate starts work.

Don’t ever let the tools hinder this process! When I train new recruiters, they want to cloud the job with all of the things that don’t make money. I tell new recruiters to put away all of the extra gear for the first three months, and buy two notebooks: one notebook for marketing and one notebook for candidate information.

Now, let’s get back to me. The celebrations as well as the bad times are what make recruiting great. Just two weeks earlier in a different deal, a VP called me with good news on a Friday night at 7 p.m. They had hired our candidate, but there was a slight problem. The candidate had come to us after being rejected three months earlier by this company. The recruiting department felt that it only owed us a 50% fee since the candidate had reapplied for the job. The VP assured me that we would work out a full fee. It is great to have allies in high places.

After a week of wrangling with the tough corporate recruiter, who you would have thought was the owner of the company by the way she was fighting for a deal, we all agreed on a full fee. Wow. That was great news, but there was no celebration since I didn’t trust the deal. A day later, I received an email from the corporate recruiter with some interesting news. The candidate had left – he went MIA — so there was no deal!

I sat back and thought to myself how funny this business is. Recruiting can be very lonely and so hard to grasp, but we live for the celebrations. Although the celebrations are short-lived, they are so sweet!

Now, I’ve wasted too much time on this article. I need to hit it hard. You know, I think I will have one more cigarette, another cup of joe, and a little more “Kodachrome.” Five minutes won’t hurt. Damn, I love my job.