7 Reasons Why Being A Recruitment Business Owner is (probably) the Hardest Job in the World

Okay, so it might not be up there with rocket science, brain surgery and being a nurse during a global pandemic, but anyone who’s worked in recruitment for more than five minutes will know that it’s considerably harder than anyone outside the profession can come close to imagining.

It’s the real reason why turnover in the recruitment industry is so high. 

It has nothing to do with poor candidates or shoddy recruitment, and everything to do with the fact that the modern recruiter needs to be – or at least learn to be – a mixture of entrepreneur, salesperson, marketer, logician, researcher, customer support and psychologist.

Sure, you can hire people to do some of those jobs for you, but it’s very difficult to pass along too much without risking the relationships and emotional connections with your clients and candidates.

And that’s just for starters.

Here are the 7 main reasons why the job of recruitment is so punishingly difficult.

Reason 1: The “Product” Has a Mind

To be clear, I believe describing a candidate purely as a product or commodity is horridly reductive. But if you’ll forgive me the description for a moment, you can’t get away from the fact that the core of the recruiter’s job is to convince an employer to hire a candidate.

This means that every recruitment/client transaction has a third dynamic that doesn’t exist in most sales processes. 

If a car salesperson shows a car to a customer and they decide to buy it, the car can’t turn around and decide they don’t want to leave the showroom. The car doesn’t have emotions, a family and a mortgage to pay. It cannot reject the situation. 

Candidates on the other hand do things for their own reasons, which is perfectly fine, but these reasons often remain outside of the recruiter’s ability to affect.

Reason 2: Every sale has multiple buyers to convince

In order to win a retained or exclusive recruitment assignment, the recruiter quite often has to pitch to an entire hiring team that includes, for example, the MD, SD and HRD. 

That’s three skeptical people that need to be won over before the recruitment process even starts. 

Recruiters aren’t the only sales people with that kind of challenge, of course, but if the recruiter gets the client on board, he or she still needs to go out and sell this opportunity to at least 5-10 candidates and sell each of them back to the hiring team. 

And if a recruiter is working on a contingency basis, these numbers are multiplied to infinity and beyond. You have to increase activity, reduce quality and sell hard!

Reason 3: Rejection is constant

Approximately 95% of leads expand your network by giving you more people you know, but never actually turn into a sale. Which means you have to wade through a lot of rejection before you make any profit.

As you get better at your work, that percentage may drop by 5-10%, but the no’s will always outnumber the yes’s.

You need to have skin tougher than the Hulk dressed head to toe in Kevlar.

Reason 4: Recruiters are… not popular

Type “Recruiters are” into Google and see what the auto-suggest comes up with.

Today, its helpful suggestions include

• Recruiters are trash

• Recruiters are shady

• Recruiters are not your friend

That’s the kind of venom that’s usually reserved for politicians and Piers Morgan.

You could be the kindest, biggest-hearted and most ethical professional in the country, but as soon as a candidate or prospect sees your name on your business card, they’re going to treat you with at least some measure of suspicion.

Reason 5: Recruiters are legion and ultra-competitive

Despite the multitude of challenges that recruiters face, the potential financial rewards (emphasis on the word “potential”) attracts a lot of attention.

Which explains why the UK alone has an incredible 40,000 recruitment firms employing upwards of 100,000 recruitment consultants. That’s one recruiter for every 660 people in the country.

That’s a lot of competition, many of whom have no problem trying to undercut you on price.

Reason 6: The status quo is sticky

The perception from most employers (and recruiters, for that matter), is that a recruiter will only be paid if they deliver a result, and that their fee should be between 10-20% of candidate salary.

It’s how it’s always been done, so the assumption is that this is how it should always be done.

So, if you’re trying to develop your recruitment business into services that command higher fees and retained fees, you’re always paddling upstream. 

Reason 7: It’s all boom and bust (and sometimes boom then bust, then more bust)

Due to the uncertainty of people, economies and pipelines, recruitment business owners and recruitment consultants find it challenging to keep a steady cash flow. 

Additionally, many recruitment firms employ recruiters on a smaller basic salary with a high commission structure. Which means, when times get tough, even for a short time, some of the recruiters may decide to leave, causing even more financial problems for the firm as a whole.

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So, why would anybody want to be a recruiter?

Is it the herculean challenge that draws people?

Is it the uncapped commission potential?

Is it the joy of placing a highly-skilled candidate with an up-and-coming business, and seeing them both thrive over the next few years?

Probably a combination of the three.

But for many it’s also the challenge of trying to transform the recruitment industry from within. We believe, that many of the challenges described above can be mitigated with the right business structure, the right recruitment service offering and the right coaching.

Internally, and from an operations perspective, tech has become a big deal. Taking in to consideration the aforementioned dynamics (hiring teams, multiple candidates) and the fact that recruiters are sometimes marketing their service, sometimes marketing their Most Placeable Candidates (MPCs), sometimes selling, sometimes doing research, sometimes assessing, sometimes delivering, sometimes doing logistics – recruiters need a lot of tech systems to be effective.

But tech on its own isn’t a panacea.

Yet another challenge recruiters face, beyond the seven outlined above, is how to develop their service in line with the changes in technology and the increased expectations from clients.

And this cuts right to the heart of what our company is all about.

We don’t just provide you with the tech you need to develop, pitch, win and deliver retained recruitment services…

We also provide the coaching you need to get the most out of the tech so it translates into more sales.

In other words, so you can see an ROI on your investment.

So, whether you’ve been a recruiter for ten years or ten minutes, kudos to you for taking on one of the most challenging careers in the world.

But now let’s help you take the next step up.

Click here to book a free consultation with our team. It’s 100% free and there’s no obligation other than to talk to us with an open mind.