The Kitchen Sink

I started writing this post on April 15th, ,and just managed to get to the finish line. Story is 2 weeks old, but still a great story.
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I know, I know, I have to be better about blogging, but doing my job keeps getting in the way.
And doing my taxes.
So now that that's out of the way I have no excuses.

And today I had the craziest day I've ever had as a recruiter, so I figured I'd jot it down and give you some insight into how the sausage is made.

I started the day innocently enough. I mailed out 3 tax returns, and 2 quarterly prepayments. Then I signed a tax reform petition that would end the loopholes and the accountant economy by not incentivizing me to build a convoluted corporate structure for the purposes of tax savings.

And then I had my first candidate call. It was routine enough, but it might have been the 10th time in the last two weeks that I answered a question about the economy, so pardon me while I put on my rose colored glasses, and answer your economic questions.

There are sectors which are hurting as a direct result of the sub-prime mess. There are also some pretty good earnings numbers in CPG and energy. There are great investment opportunities right now (I'm all over the Visa IPO)- and there is no increase in middle management job loss. The job market is still wide open.

I do see one hiccup toward the end of the year. There has been a sharp downturn in Private Equity investment. PE firms aren't hiring, and are even pulling back their due diligence work from the top consulting firms. The result is likely to be increased competition for existing jobs as current consultants begin to leave their firms. Unless you are on Partner Track and want to stay there, now is the time to consider transitioning into industry.

See. That didn't hurt too badly.

Neither did the next call. A client calling to tell me they'd be extending an offer to one of my candidates. I always like getting that call.

And then the proverbial excrement hit the propeller.

Rumors began to hit the street that a current client is spinning off the business unit I'm working for. Candidates want answers, and the hiring manager doesn't have them. My young candidate developers are acting like the HMS Titanic just hit the iceberg.

Which wouldn't have been so bad if it didn't coincide with the most ludicrous event, quite possibly in the history of recruiting.

Let's call my client "Subsidiary." We'll call it's parent company "Corporate." We submitted a candidate to Subsidiary. The candidate had previously interviewed at Corporate. She told us that she had an initial conversation with Corporate that went nowhere, and preferred the location of Subsidiary for personal reasons anyway. Subsidiary's applicant tracking software indicated that the candidate was not in their database.

So everything is fine right?

Not so fast. Seems the candidate was actually scheduled to go out to Corporate for interviews. And of course this means that the folks in HR at Subsidiary are getting questions from HR at Corporate about how this happened, and, as we all know, shit flows downhill.

Add in a Corporate contract with the recruiter that introduced Candidate to Corporate which includes a six month override for "Subsidiaries," and you have a client with a two fee situation if the Subsidiary makes an offer to the candidate.

Which sucks, because they have separate candidate databases that do not communicate, meaning that our activity is the only reason the candidate is being considered at the Subsidiary.

I'll let you know how that turns out.

The rest of the day was pretty low key. I interviewed a new recruiter candidate to join the team, sent out 2 invoices, and got word that the offer from 8 Am this morning had been accepted.

Welcome to the always boring world of recruiting.