In this episode of Recruiter Life, our Senior Director, Project & Interim Meyer Lallouz shares his journey as a recruiter. The following transcription reflects the video above.

My name is Meyer and I support the growth of Clarity’s consulting division. Our consulting division here at Clarity focuses on working specifically with leaders of finance teams to help them deliver on certain projects and initiatives related to their finance function.

What is the state of the recruitment industry?

Well, I think unfortunately that in many ways the recruitment industry has forgotten that it is a service-oriented industry. When I’m chatting with new prospective clients or even existing clients, they are telling me that their experience with current or past agencies is that they received this stack of resumes and then they have to do all the work. The point of you know, using a specialized firm like Clarity, is that by the time you get to the interview stages, all that heavy lifting should be done.

“…The recruitment industry has forgotten that it is a service-oriented industry.”

There should be no questions around the types of the person you’re going to be meeting or the profiles that were presented. It’s just a matter of well, who can I spend you know half my day and you know half my career with right? So I think that is where unfortunately the state of the industry is a little bit flawed right now and that it’s forgotten that it’s a customer-focused industry.

How do you structure your day?

The way that I find success in my role, you know, I think the early bird gets the worm in this industry. There’s a lot of companies that do what we do and instead of doing all my research during the confines of nine to five when you know traditionally, you should be working, right. I like to come in a little earlier, do my research at around eight, build up a list of who my perspective calls are going to be for the day who my follow-ups are going to be for the day and then I like to focus on having my meetings in the afternoon.

“I think the early bird gets the worm in this industry…” 

So I can attribute my entire morning dedicated to helping grow the business here at Clarity and prospecting new clients and new positions and you know new opportunities for Clarity to acquire business and then I like to manage all my existing relationships by going out on meetings in the afternoons. At the end of the day, that’s where I like to do a lot of my follow-ups, but I think it’s really important to have a structured day in the sense, whether you do your business development in the morning or later in the day that you have some time set aside for each and that you’re not spending those blocks doing the research. You’re doing that beforehand, whether it’s the night before or the morning of.

What is your process like?

So when I am engaging a client on a search, I like to treat it like a project and create a project plan with them dating back from an absolute, you know hard set start date, right? So, I will get this date from said client, usually, we like to give six to eight weeks on a search, that’s if it would be on a permanent search and dating back from that date on when they need to start, we’re able to work backwards. What it’s able to do, it’s able to help create a lot more commitment from the client in terms of just communication in general when the interviews are expected to occur, and when a decision is going to be made.

Ultimately what it also does is it helps the candidate feel more comfortable in terms of when they can expect to receive updates on when their interviews are supposed to be scheduled for and ultimately if they are successful when they should be given a notice. If you’re in a role and you know, you’re actively interviewing for something else the most stressful thing we find in candidates is how to make the time to interview elsewhere when you’re already in a current position. So by having a project plan for both the client and the candidates, this helps them take the necessary time off and steps and creates just ownership and commitment on both parties.

Identifying the right candidate as a recruiter

Here at Clarity, we actually do have a tool that we developed in-house that helps us identify the right fit. Obviously, there’s always going to be a set of what-ifs and you know, there will never be a perfect science to this. But what we’ve done is we’ve created a tool that will help us mitigate the risks of sending someone who isn’t a fit to our clients.

What Luma-Fi helps us do is create a set of questions specific to a job frame, or specific to a certain project that the client needs to deliver. Then it creates a set of questions that the candidates need to answer against in their own words. So, this tool essentially helps us with that screening process and goes a long way.

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Clarity is a recruitment agency specializing in the placement of designated Accountants and Finance professionals in the GTA and Vancouver. Our mission is to improve decision-making in hiring by investing in behavioural science and hiring technology. We specialize in Project & Interim Resourcing, Permanent Search and Executive Search and recruit Finance and Accounting Executives for growth companies. We are a tenured team of successful recruiters who have worked in the major industries across Toronto and Vancouver. [email protected].

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