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Why recruitment is like fishing

Fishing has got to be one of the easiest sports out there, right?

Find your spot in the sun, bait your hook, cast off and relax…

However, fishing isn’t that easy, and neither is recruitment.

My father recently invited me to ‘spend a day in the sunshine by a lake stuffed with fish’ – what’s not to love about that?

What he didn’t say was that it would be raining all morning, I’d need to dig for my bait, I’d forget my chair, get no lunch and receive virtually no assistance or support for the next 6 hours or so, but……. and forgive the pun – I was hooked.

Much like fishing, recruitment hasn’t really changed in a very long time, not really.

Sure, the market changes, as does the price of fish, but deep down, it’s still recruitment and having the knowledge, experience and desire to put in the effort goes a long way.

My first-day fishing reminded me, in so many ways, of my first day in recruitment.

What I’ve learned about fishing (and recruitment):

Before you start, talk to the experts around you – they love talking – nothing better than free advice!
Don’t waste energy casting to the other side of the lake – just move your spot
Check your hook is baited regularly
Once you’re ready, keep the noise down and just get on with it
Not everyone likes fishing – especially the ones that can’t do it
Don’t confuse advice with criticism
It’s likely to rain – be prepared
You’ll get the occasional bite, but you can’t catch them all!

If you’ve recently become disenchanted with recruitment, or work for a company that seems to have made everything less fun and unnecessarily overly complicated, you may benefit from taking a step back from the coalface in order to focus on the basics.

Recruitment isn’t all about job-posting, LinkedIn, data entry and GDPR. It’s meant to be about putting people to work and changing people’s lives for the better.

Oh, and don’t forget to celebrate your wins!

This article was written by Paul Thompson, sales and marketing director at Voyager Software.


Voyager Infinity and Voyager Mid-Office are software solutions that make Recruiters’ lives easier. Voyager Infinity is a CRM used by thousands of recruiters globally to source, nurture and maintain the relationships with their clients and candidates, and Mid-Office manages the entire Pay and Bill process (IR35 ready).