This post is sponsored by Chandler Macleod
When I was 22 and looking for a new job, I had a few interviews with recruitment agencies in the city. The jobs were for administration and marketing type roles. After going through the interview process, I was told I’d make a great candidate for one agency working as a recruitment officer. I entertained the idea but soon realized recruitment is not my thing.
Fast forward to doing my apprenticeship and working alongside my dad, the recruitment process was quite simple for our business. As long as a plumber had the right licensing, was insured, had commercial experience and had their own tools, they were given work.
Unfortunately our simple process of recruiting plumbers and apprentices didn’t go all that well for us. Like the time we hired a plumber with severe anger issues. A quick reference check would have saved us the stress of dealing with a plumber who made threatening demands. His previous manager told us his history of not getting his way and vandalizing plumbing work he had just installed causing thousands of dollars worth of damage. It was a major headache for the manager and his client. As a result of this information, we had to alert the security of the buildings we were working in to ensure we wouldn’t be on the receiving end of a repeat episode.
We have stories of hiring apprentices who would say all the right things at their interview, but wouldn’t be interested working on the tools. We had one apprentice who thought he could sit on his phone all day and swear at our plumbers when he was given a job to do.
Or the apprentice that dad bailed out of jail.
Our recruitment history didn’t have the best results. In the end my dad thrust his hands in exasperation and said in future he would only put on female apprentices. Which was like reverse discrimination in the plumbing industry. In the end we stopped hiring at all.
The hardest part of recruitment is the time it takes to find the right candidate. It can be a real kick in the guts when you think you have hired the right person because they have said the right things, but you put them to work and they surprise you by not being even remotely interested in doing anything onsite.
It’s times like these that push you into the arms of a recruitment agency like Chandler Macleod who do all that hard work for you.
Let them sift through the resumes and ring the references. They can also do the medical checks and ask the hard questions so in the end they can present to you a few candidates that meet the criteria for the job you’re offering. It’s money well spent if you ask me.
Have you ever had to recruit someone? Got any recruitment stories you’d like to share?
This post has been written in accordance with my disclosure policy.
