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Movieclips Monday: Olympic sportsmanship and recruiting

Hopefully you are enjoying the London Summer Olympics. (Cheers to Great Britain for a great opening ceremony that included the skydiving Queen Elizabeth II and James Bond.)

So much pressure is placed on Olympic athletes to continuously perform at a high level throughout their careers, especially leading up to the games, that I’m sure some very competitive moments have emerged behind the scenes.

Consider the below scene from the fake Winter Olympics movie, “Blades of Glory.” Certainly there’s been more than one Olympian who felt like venting similarly when he or she didn’t win gold. (Even though in this case, both U.S. skaters did win.)


Luckily for us, there are no Olympic Games for recruiting. Despite this, recruiters have to be at the top of their game every day trying to connect job seekers with customers. As recruiters and companies that provide professional staffing services to customers, we have to remember that in our quest to fill a position, we need to always do what is right for both the job seeker and the customer.

To me it’s like good sportsmanship. Sometimes you’re going to lose a placement to a competitor. But in the end it’s about what’s right for the situation and who did the better job of finding the right person.

So when your organization is looking for a professional staffing services company, make sure you know that the company’s recruiters will be good sports. Verify that they treat candidates with respect and won’t lose sight of what’s best for everyone involved. That’s the mark of a good recruiter.

And who knows? Maybe someday recruiting will be part of the Olympics. How about a resume toss? The 4x100-minute interview relay?












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