Recruitment: Life Imitating Art

Ali Kairies, Director of Recruiting

Colvin Resources Group

 During the usual morning office coffee talk, I was having a casual conversation with my colleague about how recruiting is like dating.  On your first date you are essentially interviewing ‘candidates’ to see if there is a potential match.  You need to make sure they come from a good background, you don’t want them to have hopped around from mate to mate, they have to be motivated and successful, and most importantly there has to be a good chemistry.  We got a good chuckle and sat back down at our desks.  I started my morning as usual trying to wake up with a good article on the latest in recruiting news, and up pops the following article on “How to Spot a Recruitment Bore”.  The irony of the situation was priceless!  As I’m reading through the author’s bullet points, I thought to myself, “You can’t stop interviewing whoever you meet: check!  (Refer to recruiting is like dating comment above).  All your friends are recruiters: check!  (Well, at least most of them.  But recruiting is a tough job, and you need people who can relate!).  You can’t switch off: check!  (There’s nothing wrong with checking my emails one last time before going to bed.  I am looking for that one important email from my client letting me know the good news they want to make my candidate an offer.  That’s what recruiting is all about - the rush and excitement of being able to give that offer and helping to change a person’s life.  Knowing that I am impacting a person’s life in a positive way helps me to sleep at night, so what’s the harm in checking those emails one last time?  Now, if I get the bad news, that’s a different story….

Some of the bullet points are a little over exaggerated in the article, but basically I came to the conclusion that I am indeed a recruitment bore, according to this guy.  But then I thought to myself, “who cares?”  I love recruiting and wouldn’t want to do anything else.  My philosophical conclusion to this argument is the following:  If recruiting is my art, and life imitates art, then recruiting is my life.