I wanted to give candidates an idea of what goes on behind the scenes here at Lightning so you can understand what recruiters are up against right now, but also so you can see the processes involved from your first point of contact with a recruiter.

The Initial HEY YOU'RE A RECRUITER AND I NEED A JOB SO HERE'S MY CV Message

Now this message can take various forms; an upload on our website, a direct email, a WhatsApp or a Linkedin message...meaning recruiters can become overwhelmed with CVs.

For every CV sent a recruiter will also want to look at it personally, arrange a call if time permits and then upload the CV and all candidate data to their database. There are programmes that will pull data from CVs but it's always best to do manually, averaging around 10 minutes per CVs.

Then there's actually replying to the message itself, across 4+ platforms, whilst likely still working on active roles for clients. I've now taken to not apologising for my response time, but instead explaining there simply aren't enough hours in the day. 

Context Please Thunder

I'm proud to say that i make a conscious effort to get back to people ASAP and will keep candidates in an active recruitment process up to date, ie; as soon as i know you will. Unfortunately hiring managers are slammed right now, and because of the market can move goalposts occasionally. This is frustrating for recruiters too, so please do have some understanding.

Our purpose as a recruiter is not to 'find you a job' - we work with our clients mostly on headhunting positions and pride ourselves on truly making sure we present the best candidates to our clients. Yes our database can help, but right now I'm so swamped I'm having to take 2 weeks away out of office to build it, and even then we won't be using it to fire out mass emails to candidates, it will be used to make sure we don't miss/forget any superstars for future roles.

We See You

We also want you to remember you are seen. Personally I wasn't paid from March > August because of this pandemic so I understand peoples positions. I've kept the company going to offer support and am so humbled and grateful to have won some new business with clients. 

I'm proud that I've set up 1:1 video sessions with people that have reached out struggling personally and just needed someone to talk to, I've met up with strangers for coffees as they were alone in London and i've hosted quizzes during lockdown. I don't get paid for this but I am here to help and support.

But for us to be able to present new jobs to you there is a lot of work behind that too - remember your mum telling you that money doesn't grow on trees? Well apply that same misguided logic to jobs...we need to put in the legwork to ensure companies feel comfortable with us working with them and that their roles are presented in the right way to the market.

Nothing about Lightning is automated, it's personalised and filled with love. We will get back to you, but if we don't immediately then please know why, there's more to recruitment than just aimlessly firing CVs around and right now there simply isn't enough hours in the day. So, be nice to your recruiters, they're under as much stress as you are right now.