By: Shari Dalton
Pre-pandemic, I was meeting with a group of recruiters to do some Q/A. I was asked a very honest question, one I hadn’t received before, “We have all been burned in some way, shape or form by a traveler we’ve worked with-how do you not take that lack of trust into the next call?” It seems like a simple answer, right? You just don’t. But the truth is, it’s a little more complicated than that.
I’ve often referred to the recruiter/traveler relationship as just that, a relationship. Like anyone who has been in a bad relationship, it’s not something you walk away from easily. You often question your own actions, or inactions. You question the actions of the other person. And, like some, there is little or no resolve-there are no clear answers for what occurred. And that can be a difficult thing to let go of.
Now, I’m not claiming to be a relationship expert by any means, but I have watched enough romantic comedies to know that we never win when we’re constantly comparing new relationships to old ones or we’re just sitting around waiting for this new person to screw it up like the last one.
And I have recruited long enough to know that each and every person you begin to build a relationship deserves a new and refreshed set of eyes and ears each time. It’s really easy to get jaded in a business where you see the best and worst of people. And when you lump everyone into the same category, it can make your job way more difficult than it needs to be.
It’s important to recognize your biases and be cognizant of when they begin to creep into your thoughts and actions. Stop dragging old baggage in from your last deal that went bad. The coolest thing about our jobs is that we get to work with people and each person is unique in their own way-we need to be treating them as such. In the end, this will help us maintain a much happier and healthier work balance.
