A Day in the Life of an MCF Recruiter...

My working day always starts the night before as Recruitment is far from a Monday to Friday 9 to 5 role! Most evenings, I have initial contact with candidates that I couldn’t reach earlier in the day due to their work commitments, therefore I would spend time scheduling their screening calls over the next day or two.

I also spend evenings catching up with my clients to get feedback and hopefully job offers for my candidates from interviews that have taken place during the day or to organise interviews for the following few days.

I always like to have a clear schedule until 10.30am so that I can take care of all incoming emails, texts, and social media contact from the previous day as well as passing on the feedback from interviews and making job offers.

I will always be logged onto the Job Boards that I use, searching keywords for the relevant skills that my clients need their candidates to have. Once I have a batch of prospective candidates, I will reach out to them all via various platforms such as email, text, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, call etc.

Throughout the day, I will also get messages, emails, and calls regarding various Covid related issues. For example, I have had a candidate message me to say that the Track and Trace App had sent a notification to say they must self-Isolate for 10 days. The impact of this one issue changed so many people’s schedules that day, which needed to be addressed immediately as that candidate was booked in for an interview at 11.30am. The interview needed changing to a Video interview, which luckily, all worked out in the end.

I spend most of my day speaking to candidates to make sure that they are a good fit for a particular role. This involves having to speak about industry specific topics, which is why here at MCF Recruitment, all our consultants have industry knowledge of the sectors that we work within. We know what type of questions our clients want the answers to, so this forms part of our screening process.

Once a candidate is successful and is a good fit for the role, I make the introduction to my client, then I will arrange an interview between the two parties and begin the process of preparing my candidate. I make sure to give them an indication of how my client works, their vision, their work ethics, and expectations.

I stay in touch with that candidate throughout the whole process, as my way of working offers a personal touch. I always arrange a call the day before an interview to answer any outstanding questions or offer support on interview techniques. I contact each one of my candidates on the day of their interview to wish them Good Luck and to alleviate any last-minute nerves that they may have.

I find that 80% of the time, my candidates call or text me as soon as they have left the interview to let me know how they feel it went. I don’t think that this would happen if my screening process wasn’t the way it is. Once interviews are completed, and I have had a chat with the candidate, I will receive a call or email from my client to give me their feedback! Hopefully, this leads to a job offer! Other than this, I use my time to network, create new and maintain current working relationships as well as deal with whatever comes my way which in all honesty, could be absolutely anything!

‘Ghosting’ is one of my biggest frustrations and believe it or not, this can happen with both candidates and clients! I could spend a few weeks working with a candidate to find the right role for them, we will have emailed, texted, spoken on the phone and genuinely built up a connection to the point of me knowing which of my clients they would be better suited to.

I speak to my client and ultimately ‘sell’ my candidates skills and attributes to them resulting in an interview being offered. With a sense of satisfaction, I then drop my candidate a message to let them know the good news!!

Perfect result you would think!!

An hour passes by, then two, ‘that’s ok though’ I say to myself, ‘they may be busy at work or with family’. Two hours quickly turns into two days with no response, they don’t answer my messages and don’t pick up my calls. I then must go back to my client to leet them know that the candidate I told them was amazing, is now not interested.

A week later, I see an update on LinkedIn that they have started a new role elsewhere!

Disappointing is an understatement! As a result, I always ask my candidates if they are working with other recruiters, if they have any interviews booked or if they are waiting for an outcome following an interview to try and alleviate this issue but they aren’t always honest!

It works the opposite way too; I spend a lot of time with my clients, listening to all of their requirements so that I understand the type of candidate they want to add to their workforce.

By the time the role is advertised, and I start to look for suitable candidates, I feel like I know the role inside out and I know which of my candidates would be an ideal fit for the role so I speak to my candidates as above and then if suitable, confidently send their information over to my client.

Again, I wait for a response, it doesn’t matter that I don’t hear back quickly as often, I expect to hear from clients after work hours. Two days have passed, and I can no longer think that they haven’t had time to respond, after all they asked me for something, gave me a timescale and I provided that for them. I approach them to ask them for feedback but still get nothing, so I resign myself to the fact that they are no longer interested in working together but didn’t know how to tell me. I then go on to have a very apologetic conversation with my candidate and try to salvage what I can. Two weeks later, the client emails me as if that didn’t happen and expect to continue as before.

This is where difficult decisions sometimes need to be made as a lot of time and effort goes into recruitment and when ‘ghosting’ occurs, it has a huge impact!

The moral of the story is, please, always just be honest, it saves time, effort, and relationships.

I would say, overall, recruitment is very rewarding, and I do very often feel a sense of satisfaction when matching my candidates and clients with each other, a little bit like Cupid, matchmaking!