The Battle Between Profit and Reputation

“The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed – for lack of a better word - is good. Greed is right. Greed works.
 Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
 Greed, in all of its forms – greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge – has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed – you mark my words - will not only save Teller Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.”

Gordon Gekko, Wall Street – 1987

Gekko’s speech signified a turning point in business culture. Companies driven by greed could suddenly justify making any decision, no matter how immoral or unethical, for the purpose of profit and power.

Mass layoffs? No problem.

Insurance firms refusing to pay out on claims based on trivial technicalities? Sure!

Banks lending subprime loans risking the world economy? Why not!

The Greedy Recruiters

From the 80s until the 2008 recession, recruitment boomed, motivated by Gekko’s mantra: “greed is good”.

Unfortunately, many recruitment malpractices were born from this era of power and greed…

For example, Recruiter A won’t “waste their time” giving feedback to an unsuccessful final-stage candidate. This is 5 minutes of their time they could spend finding new candidates for new clients! Time is far too important a commodity.

Meanwhile, Recruiter B, will never be upfront with all the facts about a role - especially if it means they might not get their fee.

Unfortunately, this slimy salesman rep still lingers over the industry like a bad smell. And it’s not just individual consultants that perpetuate this negativity.

Management teams from huge recruitment offices are adding fuel to the fire with things like:

• Unrealistic KPIs (call times, CVs, vacancies generated) focused on making more money

• Commission-driven assignments based on speed and profitability rather than hard work, creativity, and cultural values

• Threats of letting employees go if they don’t perform financially. (In these situations, employees work themselves to the ground, experiencing burnout, demotivation, and a range of other potential mental health issues until they pack it in all together and find a new role themselves!)

Ultimately, these “traditional” recruitment practices value revenue over brand reputation (and humanity!).

Fee > Brand


The Consequences

Prioritising revenue over employee and candidate health, and ultimately brand reputation, can have some pretty devastating consequences for candidates, consultants, and companies.

Most individual consultants work in fairly small markets like “perm C#/.NET development, NW England” or “Contract Cloud and Infrastructure, London and M4 Corridor”.

The markets are split like this to give individual consultants the opportunity to get to know everyone and immerse themselves in the market.

So, if the individual is forced into making certain decisions for the benefit of the profit-hungry agency, it won’t be long before most of their specific market know their name. Meaning they ultimately gain a bad reputation for themselves and their agency until they’re forced to move into a different market - either within the same agency or another.

This hinders the recruitment process for the companies they’re working with, earning them a bad reputation for things like ghosting final stage candidates or disregarding great candidates early on - when these practices are undeniably out of their control.


So, What’s the Alternative?

We’re agreed. The “traditional” recruiters have it all wrong. Greed is, in fact, not good.

Greed creates a devastating short-sightedness that in the long term stunts growth for individuals and entire organisations - a ripple effect that ultimately impacts the clients working with these agencies too.

So, what’s the alternative?

When we started Findrs in 2018, we dared ourselves to be different.

We’ve built a different kind of recruitment agency; a group of left-field people-people helping grow start-ups and scale-ups.

We’re motivated by something completely opposite to greed - generosity.

We believe good people aren’t hard to find. So we only work with good people. And we put all our time into matching good candidates and clients to build even better teams.

Our vision is based on hard work and transparency, we aim to save you time, risk, and money. In fact, we’re so far from the “greed is good” mantra that we operate flexible shared-risk payment plans that allow clients and their teams to grow and be the best they can be - especially in their formative years where cashflow can be tight.

Our aim is to push recruitment in the right direction by going above and beyond to help clients and candidates scale and build teams that are out of this world. If there’s a way we can help a client or candidate, we will - even if there’s nothing immediately in it for us.

Just a couple of practices we pride ourselves on include:

• Taking the time to provide feedback to every candidate that interacts with us

• Dedicating our time to support candidates struggling to find new work - providing coaching & advice with our Candidate Plan

• Supporting clients with investment strategy, offering access to start-up accelerator workshops

• Listening to clients’ pitches & providing constructive feedback to ensure your decks are as effective as possible

• Providing clients with access to our learning and development partners: Skiller Whale & Sales Academy

This isn’t some hippy, millennial, spiced-pumpkin latte drinking business model. We truly believe what goes around, comes around so if we’re in a position to help - whether candidate or client - we will.

Build the right team, with the right team

If you’re recruiting and looking for your strategic growth partner, get in touch.

Or, get to know us better and by browsing through our values, flexible pricing terms, and incredible team.