JMES Book of Recruitment Fables
Jon Michel having just finished The Lord of The Rings trilogy has been immersed in the wacky world of fables and folklore of late. It's come to our realisation that we at JMES have our own deep catalogue of recruitment fables we often get to draw upon and occasionally relive, save these are based on real life experiences (so technically not a fable) so here are a few unforgettables.
This client (a top quartile global equity manager) knocked back said candidate after the first interview, can’t recall why now… Anyway, unperturbed he wrote a really articulate and heartfelt email to the client who then reconsidered their call, agreed they may have been a little hasty in their initial call and readmitted them back into the recruitment process. Following many interviews / case studies / reference checks later they gladly offered a role to our persistent candidate.
So the local CEO of this highly reputable blue chip investment manager popped in to our offices one day and asked if we knew anything about ******* funds and could we help them gain some insight into the market, and if and how they might go about setting up a new business line. Well, have you come to the right place we said, as we had already helped build similar teams for several clients in this asset class. So having introduced the CEO to some hand picked market leaders in this area, under the guise of 'would you share your insights and advice to a potential new entrant?' (very generous of them to give their time gratis I know) we had effectively not only given them a road map as to how, as well as the confidence that this could be pulled off, but also a short list of candidates to choose from for the role - of which we can gladly report they were able to secure the services of their first pick!
During a hiring process for one of the 4 Majors, as we call them. We had a candidate under offer, though we sensed they were juggling a number of other opportunities at the time (not an unusual scenario). The offer had been extended for over a week and we had heard nothing even though we had chased the candidate via email, text and phone - total silence. Feeling our client at least deserved a response, even if to the negative, the recruiter took it upon himself to go round to the candidates house and confront them. They knocked on the door which was answered by the candidates partner who said their other half had popped out but would be back in 10 minutes and they were perfectly welcome to wait inside which they did. Well 10 minutes later the candidate returned, came walking through the front door only to be taken aback to find the recruiter comfortably parked in their kitchen with a cup of tea. So what did they do, but turn tail and run directly out of the front door they had just walked through. Quite bizarre. Needless to say we reported back to the client who rescinded the offer and probably avoided making a terrible hire in the end.
