Page 121 - James Caan - The Real Deal

11 · Pall Mall

were offered the job. It really mattered to me that they were
excited about the opportunity.
Every recruitment consultant feels disappointed when their
candidate doesn’t take up a job offer, but in those early days I was
gutted. It was a lot of work and if a candidate decided to stay put I
obviously wouldn’t get paid. Having already spent several hours with
a candidate, if I thought there was a chance I could persuade him to
change his mind I would always call him up and ask him for a coffee.
I needed to understand why he wasn’t taking up the opportunity
and to do that I had to know where he thought his career was
going, how well he thought he was doing in comparison to his
peers, or if he was financially secure. I would keep digging and
digging and digging until I found out his real objection. Perhaps
one of his colleagues had been at his company for a shorter period
of time and had been promoted ahead of him: he didn’t want to
leave until he’d got that experience on his CV. I think this is
something most recruitment consultants don’t usually bother with,
and yet just a bit more effort to understand what candidates really
want is all you need to get a result.
I was then in a position to call the client back:
‘John’s really interested, but he’s still undecided because one of
the things that’s really important to him is management experi-
ence. If he were to come to you, what kind of opportunities would
there be for promotion?’
‘Well, there’s nothing immediately . . .’
‘How long, would you say, before you would consider him for
a management position?’
‘If he performs, maybe between three and six months.’
‘That’s great. If you could put that in writing then I think he will
come on board.’ It was important that the promotion was real, and
having it in writing allowed me to go back to the candidate and
convince him he had better opportunities with the new employer
than his existing one.

111