We all know that the Holidays are for gathering together with family and friends to celebrate the past year, exchange gifts, and eat tons and tons of delicious food. Unless, of course, you’re the host. In that case, you can add weeks of planning, an expensive shopping list, trying to please everyone’s varying tastes and trading your leisure time for a week’s worth of cooking to the list. Now, just imagine that this is what recruiters do. Every. Single. Day.
Planning
When you decide to host the holidays in your home, you are going to spend a minimum of two weeks planning ahead of time. You have to be cognizant of how to accommodate everyone’s different tastes and needs, you must decide where in the world you’re going to put everyone, and how the heck you’re going to pull off an amazing holiday for everyone.
When recruiters take on a new search assignment, we more or less follow the same exact steps. We take into consideration the hiring manager and team’s preferences, browse through candidate resumes and imagine how they will fit into the role, and try to come up with an interviewing timeline that will work for all parties.
Investment
Hosting the holidays requires a significant investment of time, energy, and money. Most often it involves a variety of commitments from cooking, to shopping and wrapping, to providing entertainment.
Our recruiters put the same investment into every project they work on. We customize every search to fit the needs of each specific client, the culture, the community, and of course the desired skill set. Starting from the second an agreement is signed, our recruiters are committed to providing our clients with qualified candidate who will fill every box on their wish list.
Patience
The holidays require a lot of patience. With extra family in town, kids hopped up on sugar, and a highly elevated stress level, you need to channel your inner zen to get through it all. The best things you can do? Plan ahead, communicate clearly, and be ready for anything.
Recruiters do these things every day. After we’ve submitted a great candidate, we have to wait hours, or sometimes days, to receive feedback from our clients. This is why we try to establish a clear communication plan ahead of time and why we keep our phones on at night – so we can take care of things at a moment’s notice!
Anticipation
Hosting the holidays isn’t ALL bad! If you’re lucky enough to have kids in your group, then you get to experience the joy of seeing their faces light up with anticipation throughout the week at the thought of Santa shimmying down their chimney.
This is our favorite AND least favorite thing about our jobs! As recruiters, we anxiously wait by the phone while our candidates are in interviews or constantly refresh our email when we’re anticipating an offer to come through. But the satisfaction that comes with finally getting word that your candidate will be hired is the absolute best and why we love what we do!
