It’s raining targets at the recruitment firm I work. My boss has ordered me to interview 100 candidates on the phone and invite 30 to meet in person at the Bandra Kurla Complex office. Every last thing we do in office (except visiting the loo, though I have a feeling even that will begin to be recorded) must be filed, in real time, on dark-ages software that spits out feedback reports with maddening frequency. The managing director (MD) likes to call this the “trading floor” culture. Stop me from barfing, please.
The problem: when to call all these people to office? Tuesday afternoons are devoted to business development (short for having corporate HRs hanging up on you). Monday mornings are “Upses” (short for Update Sessions) — a deceptively simple term for mind games that the boss plays with us, raising his eyebrows, gulping absent saliva and stretching his arms in mock consternation at our absolute incompetence in meeting key performance indicators for the week gone by.
And no meetings after 5 pm on Fridays, too. You see, in spite of the mind-numbing work, we are a “fun” organisation. No efforts are spared by the admin to ferret out the best place to take us all out for drinks. It’s Sula night one week, Spanish tapas the next. Not attending these backslapping, brain-deadening soirées is not an option if you want any chance in hell to ingratiate yourself with the MD, who has a weakness for flattery.
What remains of our time in office is dubbed “core hours”, 10 to 1 pre-lunch and 2 to 5 post. This is meant for meeting clients (who need people) and candidates (whom we place). We brief them about the company, how we are a 35-year-old group with offices spanning the globe, how we specialise in particular sectors, how our consultants have operational expertise in the sectors they recruit for, and so on and so forth. The entire spiel is so calculatedly regurgitated it loses all semblance of truth.
Oh, the targets! In the middle of all this, we are supposed to call people – random people mind you – people who apply to job forums as diverse as Naukri (“A staffing site,” in the insouciant words of my boss) and IIM Jobs (“Bums of heaven,” a cheeky, and wholly undeserving, reference to their genius). On the phone, with the headset strapped on, we look no different from those BPO sods who dish out advice to irate Americans in foreign accents. When speaking to candidates, the brief given to us is to sound pally but concerned, interested but discreet, charming but imperious. It’s enough to make one reach for those anti-depressants at the end of the day.
We do all this “to read the market”. “The more people you speak to,” says our crafty MD, “the more information you get from the market, and the better you understand the gaps we can fill as recruiters.” “Hot bosses” are those looking out to fill a position under them. “Hot leads” are places the candidate has already applied to and, therefore, a likely source of revenue.
Frankly, it all sounds a bit like robbing Peter to pay Paul. There are days I doubt if I am even doing any real work. Like real estate brokers and insurance agents, we midwife deals that are already there for the taking. I know India is a rapidly-transforming service economy, but my father who worked all his life managing a factory swarming with labour who turned clay into curios would baulk at the oafish nature of my job.
I should have smelled it. When the MD visited my campus back in December and offered me a Rs 14-lakh base package with a separate performance bonus, I should have kept my wits about me and not been blinded by the promise of big bucks. Money is a funny thing. It gives you such a false sense of comfort – such an illusory, distant well-spring of happiness – that you get all muddled in the head. Damn it, I didn’t even think about what my job would be. Simply because one meets top-dogs at leading companies and helps place IIT-IIM types does not take away from the fact that one is merely a fawning middleman.
Back to targets. I have three client meetings lined for Monday. Starting nine, I will be traversing Navi Mumbai at one extreme to Churchgate at the other. Hope to get some solid leads. I am really looking forward to stepping out. It will help me shake off the BPO feel that I get in the office. It’s important in case I start feeling more of a lifeless ingredient in a nameless industrial stew than I already do.
The author has switched too many jobs in the past and hopes he can hold down this one
