My most embarrassing recruitment story

I love recruitment, it genuinely changed my life. And working at Opus gave me a recruitment Harvard level education.

So if you want to get into the recruitment game or if you are an aspiring recruitment consultant, heck even if you are a seasoned top biller. Have a read, cause you might learn something or at the very least it will put a smile on your face. I guarantee you that. This is my most embarrassing recruitment story.

It was January 2017 I was working for Opus for about 18 months, I already made one promotion but my career hadn’t lifted off yet. I just switched markets and I had my eyes on 2017, it had to happen for me that year.

We had Amy Golding coming over that week, at the time she wasn’t the CEO yet but one of the managing directors. Still I really wanted to impress her during her stay. The best way to do that in my mind was by doing a deal.

I had one final interview that week. A lady called Anee Singh (I will never forget her name) with a company called the Next ad. I thought I had prepped Anee well for her interview and was very confident I would get an offer for her. And I was right, the feedback from The Next Ad was positive and the offer came through that same day.

I got an exciting, anxious feeling in my stomach when I called Anee to deliver the offer. She was happy with the salary but not with the duration of the contract. She wanted an indefinite contract, not a 12 month contract.

Fuck! Poor qualification by me. I had to go back to the client and get that for her otherwise she would not accept. Called The Next Ad and they did not want to lose the candidate so they agreed on an indefinite contract.

YES! Surely it’s a done deal now! I tried to call Anee. No answer, so I sent her an email saying I got her the indefinite contract.

Anee replied back and as soon as I saw the word “accept” I jumped off my seat and shouted deal! I put on my deal song “All the way up” from Fat Joe and French Montana. And was bouncing like a rapper whilst I was receiving high fives from my colleagues Laurence Taylor was there, Ryan Speed, Jessica Wooley and obviously Amy Golding.

I replied Anee with an email asking for her personal details, so the client could draw up the official contract.

She replied back saying I am confused, I just sent you an email saying I will accept an other opportunity. I checked her initial reply, she was right!

Sweat started to pour out of my face and armpits. How did I miss that?!

I told Ryan (my director) about what just happened. He made me call her back, everybody in the office got quiet and listened to me how I was stuttering and fighting to safe face. But I couldn’t change her mind anymore. Later that week I saw she was placed by Vinny van Leeuwen (great recruiter) my main competition at a company I had worked with previously as well.

Valuable, hard lessons were learnt by me that day. In a situation like that you tend to blame the candidate. But After a week I realized it was all my fault. Too excited, too forceful, poor qualification, didn’t sent the candidate to all my clients and to top it all off I didn’t even read well.

So I did a 180 and switched my mentality, Don’t get me wrong I was still impatient, but I was not ignoring red flags anymore and more importantly I started to sell, to some extend, against my own clients to my candidates to get an honest answer.

What do they really want? So the close would be seamless when the offer came through.

And it worked! I got shortlisted for multiple company awards that year and won the “Amsterdam consultant of the year award”.

Good sales people listen more than they talk. This was my most embarrassing recruitment story.