If you're looking for a candidate, you'd better keep your expectations...realistic. Stephanie shares a story of how she had to give it straight to one client, and why ultimately, they appreciated the candor.
Today I wanna share with you the most common conversation I am having with clients and potential clients, and it is about the quality of candidates, the market is varying.
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Just in the last couple weeks I was on the call.
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With a potential client, and I was very appreciative.
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They had been referred to me by another client and they called me up and they were very excited.
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They said, Hey, we typically don't use search firms, but we've heard great things about you and we really need help on filling this position.
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So of course I was very excited.
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Tell me all about it.
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What are you looking for?
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And as we started to get into some of the specifics, I started to understand why they were gonna have a hard time filling the role.
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In summary, their expectations were incongruent with the compensation that they were offering.
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And so when it became appropriate, I shared with them.
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Hey, I really appreciate the call.
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And, and before we take it too much further, I probably need to give you some education from the marketplace.
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And we talked through a recent search or two that I had done that was very similar to what they were looking for.
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In the same market, and I explained the compensation that the market was bearing.
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They realized that quite frankly, they were pretty far off the mark.
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We talked through a couple possible solutions and at the end of the day they said, well, gosh, if we make those changes, I'm not really sure we're gonna need you.
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And while it was difficult to hear that, no one likes to hear that, I said, yeah, you may not.
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And sincerely, you should probably try it on your own.
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Save yourself my fee for a month and see what you can find.
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Of course, if you get stuck and you can't find what you need at that point, please call me back.
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I just did similar searches there.
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They were so appreciative.
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Here's what's interesting and what happened.
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They called me a week later and they said, you know what?
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We actually don't know if we're gonna be able to find what we want without you.
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We really appreciated the approach that you took.
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We're gonna give you the search anyway with the new criteria.
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Of course, I was super thankful, but what it reminded me of was the conversations of right now in the marketplace, because competition for talent is so high.
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What the market is bearing in passive candidates, and that's usually what I get called to go find.
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The active ones are pretty easy to locate are let's go to the passive candidate pool.
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Unfortunately though, what happens is when they go to call me, what they're thinking is, Hey.
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I will take a six or seven without a recruiter fee, but if I'm gonna pay you, they've gotta be a 10 or a 10, or my favorite FA phrase right now is they need to be a purple spotted unicorn.
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My response is always the same.
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I'm not even sure unicorns exist for me to go find a purple spotted one.
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While I think I'm pretty good at what I do, I don't know that I'm.
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That good, but here's what I can tell you about with the market's spar.
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I can go to the passive candidate pool and I will bring back for you three to four to five folks that are somewhere between a six and a half or an eight outta 10.
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That's what the market's bearing.
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It may not be a purple spotted unicorn.
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It's still gonna probably be a four-legged furry animal that maybe has a tail, and I'm not saying it's a unicorn, but probably pretty close.
