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Recently joining e2 Cyber, and the world of recruitment, Matt Kiss shares what he's learnt in his first 4 weeks as a Cyber Talent Consultant.

Coffess, Candidate Catch Ups and How I Forgot Everything I Thought I Knew About Recruitment!

Wow, what a ride this has been. I came into recruitment with some expectations on the role and what I’d be doing, and for the most part, I wasn’t wrong. What I failed to realise was just how much is involved in the wide world of recruitment. 

When you think of recruiters, you expect that a job comes in, you call a couple of candidates, have a few coffees and BAM! Role filled, everyone’s happy. Well, it is sort of like that, though, it’s much, MUCH, more…..!

From the moment I stepped in the front door I was told “Forget everything you know about recruitment….” (admittedly not hard seeing as I knew very little!) “….and follow the process”. So, this became my life. ‘The process’, simple enough and offers a fallback for when I inevitably overthink, and it goes like this:

• Set Up the Role [Brief the Role > Set up job > Job description > Job Ad] 
• Source candidates
• Conduct interviews
• Collate final CVs 
• Client Submission 
• Update systems.

Easy right? But then, how do you set up the job? How do you source the candidates? You’re telling me it doesn’t all fall into my lap?! Where’s the coffee come into the ‘process’?! 

Setting up the Role:

Starting with the brief, setting up the role is pretty straight forward. Discuss the role (in depth, CANNOT stress this enough) with the Consultant I’m supporting. Then using this information, create a job description, including role descriptions, benefits, what the candidate will be doing, and the main requirements needed for success. 

Once the job is set up and the JD (Job Description) created, we use this to write the ad. Then post the ad and wait for the candidates to roll in…. well, sort of...

Candidate Sourcing:

You will always have people applying for to role, which is a good start but to consider the role ‘sourced’ correctly, we break it down like this:

• Long list of 50-70
• Short list of 8-16
• Interview 4 
• Submit 2

There will be some in the applied list that meet all the client requirements and clearances but where do the rest come from?! 

We conduct an extensive search to find the right match. It’s a deep dive into Seek, LinkedIn, internal databases and our network. Then reviewing CV after CV after CV until your eyes blur! 

Finally you pull together your long list, so now what?

Candidate Calling: 

Time to put aside your awkwardness (well, at least I needed to) and CALL THE CANDIDATES. Phone call, after phone call, now you’re learning, you get a feel for which candidates live in the right location, which candidates are probably not the right fit and which ones are exactly who you need. You overcome the awkward beginning of calling people out of the blue, you work out the best ways to approach the calls and you make the TERRIBLE jokes and see how they ‘land’ (bit of pun, just wait...), like:

Candidate: “sorry if you can’t hear very well, I’m driving past the airport”

Me: “Oh that’s okay! I’ll try not make this call too ‘plane’ for you then!”

So, yeah, there’s that, anyway, now you’ve made you calls and worked out which candidates were probably not the right ones and which candidate’s tick the boxes to meet and explore further. Finally, coffee time! 

You meet your shortlist candidates face to face, dragging along your consultant for the show. Grab a coffee and have a chat for 30 mins to dig deeper into their experience and suitability. Do these 4 to 6 times - it’s a lot of coffee! Take notes and whittle this list from 4-6 to 2. After hours and hours of briefings, sourcing, calls, interviews, you finally have the 2 candidates which you vouch for above all others. The candidates that you submit to our client for the role. 

And how long does all this take? 1 week. That’s right! All the sourcing, calls, interviews, and finalising for 2 candidates takes 1 week. Meaning you really only get 2 days of sourcing, and you’d want to be calling candidates from day 1 as you really only have 2 days to interview before submissions. 

In a nutshell, that’s the role. That’s recruitment. Was it what you expected? Like I said from the start, it’s probably exactly what you expected, just, much, much more. 

So, you’re probably wondering, how do I do it? How I you stop myself from getting overwhelmed? How do I keep sourcing when I’ve looked at 100 CVs and no one ticks the boxes to be right for the role. How do I stop from panicking when it’s day 3 and your ‘long’ list is 16 people?

I follow the process. I simplify it, break it down. Eventually you start to work it out. You get a better understanding about who suits and who doesn’t. 

This crazy whirlwind of emotion you go through, from banging your head against the wall trying to find the right candidates, to getting the PERFECT recommendation from someone and it all seems to fall into place. This crazy whirlwind you go through, day after day, week after week. But the strangest part of it all? I LOVE it. And I know that all I have to do is….

Drink a lot of coffee and follow the process.