Chris Agomuo | Senior Consultant, Agency |  

One thing that I would have done differently is more Business Development and build client relationships with hiring managers early on. BD is not such a fun thing to do for many people, but it is very important. Having workable jobs and relationships with clients makes it much easier to make placements.

Anonymous | Senior Consultant, Agency

My advice would be to meet more senior people. Getting in touch with stakeholders and building a foundation of trust is the best way to start any partnership in this business. It will lead to more referrals, more leads, and most importantly, more placements.

Matthew Berzins | Agency, Senior Consultant |

If I could give my younger self advice, I think the best advice I could give myself is to not be afraid of people with a big titles. People are people. Company presidents actually like talking about topics which have nothing to do with business. Sometimes it`s actually refreshing for them to not have to talk about business for once — so stop being so serious!!

Sometimes it`s actually refreshing for company presidents to not have to talk about business for once — so stop being so serious!!

I used to be so nervous thinking about what I had to talk about in a meeting or a business lunch and would stress about preparing everything in advance. Of course, having an agenda is important but building relationships and enjoying yourself is just as important. Once I discovered the key of being more “human”, my business grew substantially. If I had known this earlier, I could have been much more successful sooner!

Anonymous | Senior Consultant, Agency

I would say stay at least as focused on longer-term relationships as you would on week-to-week things like KPIs, etc.

Anonymous | Consultant, Agency

Apply to the job your own unique experience and passion — like work, habits, hobbies, etc. For example I was scared of Cold Calling when I got into recruitment. So I tried to think about it as an “audio” experience and enjoy it in the way I enjoy music — which is my passion and the industry I came from.

Anonymous | Consultant, Agency

There are 3 things that I would change:

Understand Seasonal Recruitment Cycles. If you have no experience and are just entering the industry, ask about seasonal recruitment cycles. Especially if you are joining during January which is a very slow month; I think a lot people joining during this timeframe have trouble meeting expectations and can get discouraged quickly.

Learn to Prioritize. I think this came to me after my 1st month. Granted, I wake up rather early and start well before others. That is just my style but I have seen many people take that same approach and burn out. What I mean to say is, take a month and measure what works and what does not work. Did you spend too long on a search? Was your meeting effective? It’s a hard thing to do to admit to yourself, let alone to others, that “yeah, that was not the best use of my time”.

Make Connections with People on Other Teams! I feel this is crucial especially with Covid and the recent high turnover rate in recruitment. I can not tell you how many times I have had ex-colleagues who were on different teams, moved to client-side, and now they are my client! I would work on internal networking as I feel that is very important.

Anonymous | Associate Director, Agency

I wish I specialized in Cybersecurity earlier in my career. I wasted about 6 months doing general IT.

After that I started networking with other cybersecurity recruiters outside my region to understand demand and supply as a proxy for my region.

Developing that market nose for business takes time and is super important to keep me focused. Knowing what`s hot now keeps me focused on revenue generating activities.

Anonymous | Senior Consultant

I wish I would have focused on an industry that I was interested in from the beginning. I believe specialization is important.

Adrien Durvin | Partner, Agency |

Even though I have known good success in my field, if I had to go back and change something I would focus on learning more from others.

I started too confident and headhunted candidates that were not suitable for our clients. I should have contributed more to the team`s success and learned from their experience and strategy and not try to do everything by myself.

If I could go back I would have taken more time to learn from more experienced people around me.

Nick Borg | Senior Consultant, Agency |  

If I could go back…I`d probably do things pretty similarly. I learned my industry area well by reading deeply and widely about the subject and connected with as many people as I could to get more information so that within 6 months I knew how to ask the right questions. I did a lot of cold calling and got to enjoy the challenge and it works. Most importantly I focused on a lot of face-to-face meetings which built trust and more knowledge in the industry.

Things I could do better would be to actively search out startups and network with the decision makers to bring startups into Japan; however, there are pros and cons to that approach, too.

Overall I am happy with what I did and part of my success has been realizing that I can`t do it all – I can`t work every job and I can`t win everything (though I still try to).

Overall I am very happy with what I did and part of my success has been realizing that I can`t do it all – I can`t work every job and I can`t win everything (though I still try to). I accept my failures and try to do better next time by learning from my mistakes. If you win everything it starts to get boring. I like retained for the guaranteed income but the masochistic part of me likes the contingency more as it gives me the competitive drive to push harder. I accept that need in myself and use it to drive myself. I think the hardest thing in recruiting is understanding your strengths and weaknesses and learning how to use them, especially your weaknesses. Other than that, its a pretty straightforward job.

Kerry Kudulaiti | Consultant, Agency |

Two things I wish I had done or done better when I first started: qualifying prospects and providing value-added content.

If I could go back and re-train myself, I wouldn’t necessarily want to focus on more general skills development. Skills such as calling, emailing, prospecting, (pre)closing will be trained on at most agencies. And there are a lot of external resources as well. It`s not that I do not see these are essential qualities. They are. But those are something most recruiters will be able to develop, mirror, re-invent as you go.

Instead, I would focus on developing my sales instinct, the ability to assess who I can sell and who I can’t. And the ability to accept that I don’t need to sell to everyone.

So there are two things I wish I understood better when I first started: qualifying and providing value-added content.

A recruiter who always knows or at least tries to get better at “qualifying” will save tremendous time to focus on the projects, people, and companies that matter to his/her business.

A recruiter who always knows or at least tries to get better at “qualifying” will save tremendous time to focus on projects, people, companies that matter. It was hard for me to ask the “deep” question partly because I did not want to get disappointed by the other parties` reaction — which seems painful in the short-term, but is, in fact, the best thing that can happen to you for the long haul. This way, you get to reallocate your time and effort to focus and develop candidates as well as clients who will give you their commitment.

Also, I want to provide value through content generation. It is easy to focus on the money in front of you since you do not get any revenue from content generation, at least not until you possess a big community or fan base.

I choose to make a small difference by daily text-content sharing via LinkedIn, and soon I will start doing short-video.

That said, I believe we – the recruiters – do not have the best reputation in the industry, and I can understand some of the frustration from candidates and clients. Though it doesn’t always make sense, there is certainly room for us to get better. I choose to make a small difference by daily text-content sharing via LinkedIn, and soon I will start doing short-video. I have been helping 30 random candidates review their resume, cover letter, sometimes even a call to help them prepare interviews or guide them on what might be the reason causing their frustration in job-hunting.

I am not getting paid for any of these, which is more than fine as it was never my intention anyway. Doing this makes me proud as a recruiter. I can confidently say I am doing the best I can as a recruiter by providing value and impact as a content creator. So, I wish this is something I started doing from very early stage.

Lincoln Torrey | Principal Consultant, Agency | 

It is hard to generate a pithy answer as this is actually a very deep question. I would want to retrain myself on a few points:

Actually Look at the Resumes. Unfortunately, I just accepted most resumes as-is when I was new to the business. Candidates are not resume experts and often share documents that poorly describe their abilities. Candidates really appreciate some constructive criticism and clients really appreciate clean, to-the-point resumes. Spending time to advise a candidate on their resume is well worth the investment.

Work with HR to Help Move Candidates Through the Process. The client-side HR want to close roles and want to help candidates get jobs. They will give great insight into interview processes and hiring managers if asked.

Run Through the Finish Line. If you slow down early, then people pass you and you lose. Recruitment is not over with a CV submittal nor with an interview request. It is often not over with a signature or even a start date. It is important to take care of both candidate and client through the start and probation to ensure that your work is complete.

Recruitment is not over with a CV submittal nor with an interview request. It is often not over with a signature or even a start date.