Recruiters, which Star Wars character is your boss? Part 4: The Dogmatist

Its fair to say that our industry attracts its fair share of sociopaths.  Most of us are nice folk; even tempered and well adjusted.  But then there are those amongst us who, to put it kindly, aren’t quite as balanced.  And sometimes those individuals are actually quite good at recruitment.  And one of the interesting traits of recruitment is that, regardless of which side of the sociopath line people sit, if they are good at recruiting they often get promoted into management roles. 

So how do we categorise them?  Star Wars of course.  Although we like to think of ourselves as cheeky smugglers, starry-eyed farm boys or quick witted princesses, we also have to accept that many who hold positions of authority within our industry are in fact Sith Lords, Hutt Gangsters or riddle talking small green things (metaphorically speaking).  So which of these Star Wars characters most resembles your recruitment manager?

We’ve already covered The Motivator, The Manipulator and The Bumbler. This week we look at that recruitment stalwart, The Dogmatist. 

The Dogmatist knows best.  Dogma is her watch word.  Training recruiters for 800 years she has been, and told how to do it differently, she will not be.  The rules are the rules and that’s that.  She’ll find a hundred reasons to block change or any of your ideas for doing things differently; you’re too old, too focused on the future, too reckless, too ruled by fear, too angry, too likely to turn into an evil despot, too active on Twitter etc etc.  Whatever the reason, she’ll block you at every turn because ‘those are the rules.’ 

The Dogmatist will hold you back because you want to do things a bit differently. They recruited a certain way in the 90’s, and yes, a lot of that is still relevant now but things are different, there are a different set of challenges, different opportunities.  

Maybe she’s not a little green thing with big ears but I’m pretty sure The Dogmatist has got some tricks up her sleeve. 

What to do

Get out now.  Don’t get me wrong there’s a lot to be learnt from The Dogmatist, she speaks a lot of sense, has a lot of wise words, but quite a lot of it is just nonsense said in a different order so sounds good it does.

Learn what you can and get out to somewhere more dynamic, find an agency that has the foundations of recruitment dogma and tradition, yet also embraces and leads in the new world of social, digital and higher customer expectations. 

But don’t just try to get out, do it, because do or do not, there is no try. 

Sounding familiar? Time for a change? 

If you work for someone who resembles The Dogmatist why not check out our vacancies here  or get in contact with me for a confidential chat. simonm@therecruitmentcompany.com 

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Or find out what it would be like to work for The Recruitment Company here

Next week we look at The Party Maker.