I'm Mark, I run Coburg Banks, and I want to tell you what we won't do. In recruitment that turns out to matter more than the list of things we will.
We won't fire CVs at you to look busy.
The oldest trick going is six candidates in 48 hours so it feels like something's happening. Four of them are padding. You spend an evening reading them, you interview two out of politeness, and a fortnight later you're back where you started. If we've found one person worth your time, you get one, and I'll tell you plainly why the shortlist is short.
We won't push a candidate who's all right.
All right is the dangerous one. Nobody turns down an all right candidate outright, and if you've been looking for four months, all right starts to look tempting. It's also how you end up hiring for the same job again next year. If the best we've got is all right, my job is to say so, not to help you talk yourself into it.
We won't pretend a role is fine when it isn't.
Sometimes the salary is set below what someone with that experience is currently earning elsewhere, so the people you're picturing will never apply. Sometimes the job as written is really two jobs, and the person who can do both halves well doesn't exist at that money. Telling you either of those costs us the fee we'd have earned sending CVs at a role that was never going to fill.
Why I can afford to say all that
Turning work down sounds like a luxury. It's closer to arithmetic.
Across our business, 92% of clients come back to us for their next hire. That only holds up if the last one worked. So the expensive mistake isn't losing a fee by being straight with you, it's putting someone in who leaves in month five and losing you for good.
Look at it over a couple of years rather than one invoice and it stops being a noble gesture. A client who hires well through us three times is worth several times the one fee I'd have made by keeping quiet, and a client who hires badly through us once is worth nothing again, plus whatever they tell people.
It's the same reason I'll spend a fortnight on the slow, unrewarding part of a search rather than closing it early. On a business development role earlier this year that meant saying no to two credible people first.
So when I tell you the salary won't stretch to the person you've described, I'm not being noble about it. I'd just rather have the awkward conversation now than the other one in six months.
How we'll work
However suits you. Some clients want a call every week, some want leaving alone until there's news. Tell us which and that's what you'll get.
And you can reach me. Not a mailbox, not an account manager who joined last month. If something isn't right on one of our roles I'd rather hear it from you directly than read it in a review afterwards.
If you want to talk about a sales hire you've been putting off, I'm happy to give you an honest read on it.
Book a call and you'll get my actual opinion, including if it's one we'd turn down.
