Hishem Azzouz shares three recruiting strategies: stay candidate-focused, figure out what motivates each person on the first call, and spend your time on candidates who are actually invested. Being memorable and trustworthy matters more than chasing everyone.
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The biggest thing for me was that I was very good at the candidate side. I think it's, again, it's like a bit of a myth. Like a lot of people come into the industry and of course, you know, clients are hugely important. Like you have to have clients, but I found myself to like, if I was candidate-led and candidate-focused, then the clients would also come and they'd be happy as well. You can have all the clients in the world, but if you can't deliver on that candidate side, then it's not going to work. And I think what I did very well was where I believed that I really understood what the candidates wanted. I would have really in-depth conversations with each candidate, but I would quickly know in the first 5 minutes by asking a few good questions what really makes this candidate tick. If this candidate, they have all the skills, but if this opportunity that I'm trying to offer them isn't right for them, they're never going to take it. And there's no point trying to put a square into a round hole, you know. So that's what I teach my team now is, you know, from the first phone call, like, you have to get a really good idea what the candidate wants, what really makes them tick. And it's much more difficult, I think, in this day in our tech market. The candidates have so much choice. But yeah, I think it was my focus on the candidate side really trying to give them a genuine service and understanding where I should put my time. That is key. If you have loads of half-hour conversations with candidates that never really end up anywhere, you're not going to achieve what you want to achieve by prioritizing, okay, this candidate is super invested, this candidate really wants this job, I can control the situation or influence it. They should get your time. If you have a candidate who really isn't invested, but maybe the client likes them or they're really highly skilled, like they still have your time, but maybe not so much. So I think time management's really, really crucial and I think I think another thing in hindsight, I don't think I really knew this at the time, but one thing that made me stand out to clients I think was that they could trust me. I had a very different approach and I think I was memorable as well because of my speech, perhaps because of the fact that I could speak some German to my clients as well, and I would just try different things. And I think a big thing, especially when you're beginning in this job, it's so easy to do what everybody else is doing. It's what makes you memorable that sticks in someone's mind. You need to get a client when you call them to go, ah, it's John. Yeah, I know you, cool, you helped me last time, or you gave me some good advice. I think it's being memorable is really, really, really important.
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