In the previous post, I shared my thoughts that after five years of working, I finally realized that I can be a leader with the right tools and understanding of my learning path and progress. So, what’s the first step forward? If you feel you’ve learned project management and consider your management skills sufficient, the next step is to grow and expand!
As a “trained” manager, I understood that I couldn’t afford to learn HR-related things, so the best option, though expensive, was to try hiring a recruitment agency that would find me as many as three employees at once. And yes, the first growth goal wasn’t big—just from 8 to about 12 people.
But… the first signal that something was wrong came when, all fired up and having signed the recruitment contract, I sent over all the information about the company culture, values, mission, recently updated values, company presentation, and an explanation of how we are different from others. I blindly believed and thought that when hiring employees, this would be used to tell them how “cool” we are, how we do everything differently, and what makes us unique.
At that time, we already had something to offer: feedback talks every three months, formalized metrics without personal bias, a proper approach to work quality (still a competitive advantage), work based on standardized processes, and the largest e-commerce clients in Lithuania.
But no one read that information. No one was interested in it, and no one used it.
It turns out that recruitment agencies work on the principle of forming a database of potential candidates by conducting interviews and then, when a recruitment request arises, selecting potentially “interested” candidates from that same database to offer a job.
It turns out that recruitment agencies don’t talk about any values, don’t do any kind of value or cultural checks, and in competitive markets, they pull two cards: one—technological stack (which employees often aren’t happy with and want to “grow” and “develop”), and the other—just offering ~100–200 EUR more in hand for the same job, because they have no other way to poach employees or simply find it unprofitable to do so.
Why bother talking about values, trying to “sell” the company, and introducing it if you can just offer a higher salary? Efficiency.
Have you ever heard of psychological or character testing? For example, can you check whether the potential employee doesn’t have character flaws, isn’t lazy, doesn’t look for excuses, takes responsibility, fits the company’s values, etc.? Sadly, no. Everyone claims to do it. But do they?
In 2020, three employees were hired, and we parted ways with one after about six months. I’m reflecting now and see that the employee already showed belief-based flaws during the technical interview. If you’ve never felt appreciated in any previous workplace and felt rejected, maybe it’s a signal that the problem isn’t with the workplace. The answer likely lies in how you view and understand your work results and what being accepted means. In other words, maybe your work performance is poor, and you do nothing to improve it, so you constantly feel unrecognized.
The second hire was an employee who took medical leave every time he had to deliver a project and fix his mistakes. The first time—less than a month in—seemed like a coincidence. People get sick; that’s normal.
The second month, it started to seem suspicious. The third time was a clear signal when, not receiving vacation days during the probation period, the person just took sick leave, claiming back pain and inability to sit or lie down.
The number of mistakes didn’t decrease; the disappearances when delivering work only increased, and it became simply impossible to work. What do you do with an employee who, feeling unappreciated, drinks and does not show up to work without explanation? What do you do when the employee, after making mistakes in even the simplest tasks, always gets “sick,” and others have to fix his errors—errors so messy it’s faster to redo the task from scratch than fix what was done? You fire them.
That was my first experience with recruitment agencies. Looking back five years and reading my post about it, it’s probably clear why employees in Lithuania today change jobs more often than every two years.
Why work in the same place if, in two years, you can reach an average level and get a new offer elsewhere with a slightly higher salary? Why stay? At the same time, more and more is being said that for a good salary, you can hire a more motivated and hardworking, highly qualified employee in the Netherlands than a Lithuanian.
It’s no surprise when newcomers say, “It’s easier for me to change jobs and take that extra 100 EUR than to try harder here and learn something that I’m struggling with, or read a book and form a new skill.” And yes, every year and a half. But my question is—can you reach your full potential in a workplace if you only stay there for a year and a half? I believe a job only starts to become stale and stops offering anything new after at least three or five years. Of course, there are all kinds of employers.
No surprise either that agencies have dug their graves and can’t find good candidates anymore, while recruitment costs sometimes reach up to 8000 EUR for a programmer. Is that a reasonable amount?
All of this is my opinion, but I’m convinced that recruitment agencies “circulate” the same often unmotivated and/or not always the best candidates by checking in on them every two years.
In my view, agencies don’t care about the psychological profile or value-based match, don’t try to “sell” the company to potential employees, or check whether they are even value-compatible, because it’s not profitable for them. It takes too much time. They hire and select those who agree to switch jobs.
The best illustration of this is the calls you get when you post a CV search—salespeople from agencies saying, “We just did a similar recruitment. Maybe you’d like to talk?” What does that mean? Will you send me the leftovers from the previous recruitment?
Candidates are simply in databases, and a good agency has the biggest database from which it can offer to “interview” suitable candidates for you.
Is that the service you buy when you want to find an employee through intermediaries? Or is it just access to candidate databases you can use when needed? As far as I know, that’s precisely how many internal HR people use recruitment agencies—for a list of people they can contact.