I’m on the train again today, london and back with copious amounts of coffee including one at my favourite coffee shop in London, Kaffeine www.kaffeine.co.uk, which means I am wide awake and likely to be for the rest of the night. It’s been a productive day. First up was a a short but perfectly formed meeting with a client, an initial interview with a potential candidate for that client and an IRP (www.rec-irp.uk.com) discussion to agree how we can develop a meaningful regional plan for the North West.

So all good.

In fact considering the day involves 5 hours of travel very good.

Something occurred to me though.

For all my collaboration talk, for all of my ‘let’s be a team’ I was at these meetings on my own. All my calls tomorrow will be solo calls and my business is becoming more about me rather than less about me as I has always hoped. Based on this and in true carrie from sex in the city style. I couldn’t help but wonder if working alone all the time is good or bad or is it something that all recruiters do?

When I was young I used to like my music... well rockier than I do now. Top of the list for a while was Iron Maiden and top of the list of their tracks was the loneliness of the long distance runner. As a 15 year old I saw all sorts of meaning in the words of the song, some of which have stuck. If you look at the current (redesign on the way) martindangerfield.com you will see that theme carried over and rightly or wrongly I see recruitment as the ultimate solo career.

But does that matter?

Well you will know better than me. Some of you are working for with scale and reach and targets and well... you get the picture. You have ‘infrastructure’ the researchers, the resourcers that operate as part of your team. They all contribute to your success however much you might feel it is your success alone. Making a huge generalisation, you have too many people, too many bosses etc. to think about the time you spend alone so I am hoping for some empathy from those that work for smaller organisations. You don’t have (or need) the infrastructure, working as I do alone for the most part save for client and candidate meetings.

So what do you do to keep yourself going?

I find myself seeking out ‘like minded’ individuals but they are not always easy to find. (Let me know when you are free for a coffee!). I sit in coffee shops for company and interaction so that it feels ‘buzzy’ when making candidate calls. I do as much face to face interviewing as possible because I enjoy it (and for many of my roles it is invaluable) but it is always on my own.

So am a I alone in being alone or is this something our industry more than others experiences and what, if anything could we do it to make the loneliness something to thrive on?

about mckinley|resource® and Martin Dangerfield

mckinley|resource® is an innovative recruitment practice providing executive search, recruitment, talent advisory and project resourcing services. Delivering full UK and European coverage, we focus on identifying and engaging talented individuals within the IT services, IT outsourcing, management consultancy and technology marketplaces.

We can deploy for a day, a week, a month or longer. This means we can support your recruitment peaks, deliver spot advice or have an ongoing engagement. All we need is a desk in your office and a brief that we have agreed and signed up to. We won’t ask you to sign any long term contracts either. 

We have already proven to be a great success for our clients and are happy to work completely autonomous or alongside your current HR team / recruitment agency. Not only can we help free up the process to help find great new people but help you to look after the great people you already have.

To learn more about our approach give Martin Dangerfield (email, linkedin) a call on +44161.955.3647.