Pete Watson • Jun 21, 2022
Which side of your brain do you use to Recruit? 🧠
When I started out in Recruitment in the late 90s with the infamous SThree, you were either a Perm Recruiter, or a Contract Recruiter. You were NEVER both. Always one or the other. You couldn’t be both. It wasn’t allowed.
For the record, I was a Perm Recruiter.
We “Permys” sat on one side of the office, and the Contract Recruiters sat on the other side of the office.
We didn’t mix. We didn’t socialise. We saw them as the competition. And we were actively encouraged to dislike them.
Professional prejudice was rife in the heady days of UK IT Recruitment in the 90s.
But, it was all fairly black and white and straight forward. No grey area. No confusion.
Your typical Perm Recruiter was very different to your typical Contract Recruiter.
We Perm Recruiters were measured, composed, methodical and strategic in our thinking.
The Contract Recruiters thought quickly on their feet, flew by the seat of their pants, juggled a million balls at once, and operated at a thousand miles an hour.
In short, we were very, very different operators.
Cut from totally different cloth.
Polar opposites.
So imagine my surprise when I arrived in Australia years later to hear of this crazy concept called “a dual desk”, where the Recruiter was BOTH a Perm AND a Contract Recruiter.
My mind was blown! 🤯 How would this even work? How could this be? What sort of black magic was at play in the Australian Recruitment Industry?
How would the calm, methodical mind of a Perm Recruiter adapt to the frenzied mechanics and pace of a contract placement?
How would the frenetic brain of a Contract Recruiter tackle the emotionally intelligent and logical process of a Permanent placement?
I just assumed that the Australian Recruitment Industry had got it all wrong. They naively thought the two worlds, the two brains could coexist on the same desk.
It didn’t make any sense, as I KNEW that this wasn’t possible. Science defied it.
Then the penny dropped.
The Australian Recruitment Industry had simply worked out that the modern day Recruiter was Inteligent and adaptable enough to master both Recruitment art forms.
They weren’t, as I first thought, simply hiring Recruiters with split-personalities, adopting a Jekyll & Hyde pantomime performance to every process.
They just tried it.
And low and behold, it worked.
Thus giving Recruiters the best of both worlds…
So, bravo to the Australian Recruitment Industry for believing that Recruiters had the ability to use both the left, and the right hand side of their brain. 🧠 👏🏻