Page 214 - James Caan - The Real Deal

The Real Deal

there. Let’s start with canvassing for vacancies and map the entire
journey.’
Most salespeople wouldn’t have wanted to take on that job
because it would have meant missing out on commission, but by
then Sam knew I would make sure she was compensated: I didn’t
have to say anything and she didn’t have to ask. Sam’s loyalty to
the company meant she would do what was right for the business
ahead of what was potentially more lucrative for her.
For weeks Sam and I worked together, writing and writing and
editing and editing: it was a thousand times more complicated than I
ever thought it would be. We couldn’t use any of the shorthand that
had developed between us, or any jargon. We had to explain how our
business worked in such a way that an alien landing in Tottenham
Court Road with no knowledge of recruitment could have picked up
our manual, followed its advice and created a successful business:
everything from how you answer the phone to marketing a candidate
to raising an invoice. They would need to know what to do if a
candidate turned down an offer or a client changed the brief. Every
time we thought we had finished a chapter we found new questions
that needed answering. Franchisees didn’t just need to know how to
raise an invoice, they needed to know how to collect and bank the
money. If they placed a candidate, they needed to know where they
stood if that candidate resigned within a month, so we had to write
out the client dispute procedure. The detail was incredible, and it
took three or four months of solid and intensive work.
In the early nineties the biggest name in recruitment training was
an American called Anthony Burn. His training seminars sold out
in minutes, not hours, and he was an industry legend in America,
a real recruitment superstar. We didn’t have a budget to create our
own training videos and, even if we had, we couldn’t have
produced anything half as good as Tony’s material. His 30 Steps
of Recruitment was an industry standard and there wasn’t any
point in trying to better it. So I had an idea.

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