“If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got" - Henry Ford.

This is a post about recruitment.

But it's as much about filling difficult vacancies as it is navigating a difficult job search.

In an even market, if you take the same steps consistently, you'll invariably see similar outcomes.

So if things are working - you fill a vacancy as an employer or candidate - there's little reason to change.

But if you take those same consistent steps, and always reach the same outcome of going back to square one - the only chance of a different outcome is just that - chance.

Hoping for a lucky break isn't a strategy.

Instead, you should look at the things you haven't been doing as an opportunity for finding a better outcome.

Which isn't easy.

It's easier instead to be comfortable in failure, and stick with what we know.

Stick an advert up, go to yet more transactional agencies.

Keep applying for more jobs, write about it on LinkedIn.

Make work.

Lay blame elsewhere when opportunities lie at your feet - it's the market, it's a candidate shortage, the jobs aren't out there.

These might well be true, but if you haven't been accountable for your own part and looked for improvement, they are excuses not reasons.

And those different avenues might feel uncomfortable and something that could even waste time you don't have, yet the same can produce results quickly because it's an untapped potential that's ready to go.

For employers, it means moving from inside-out recruitment to outside-in - candidate-first.

From relying on a transactional advertising and agency approach, to one that can effect transformation through challenging you in the right way, challenging the market in the right way, and bringing candidates forward in the right way.

For candidates, it means looking at the roads you haven't travelled, sometimes because you didn't think to.

Regularly keeping in touch with colleagues and peers, adding to your relationships, while helping them keep you in mind for opportunities.

Knocking on doors of local companies (literally and figuratively) to make a case for yourself.

Writing that first LinkedIn post that promotes why you are brilliantly employable.

Optimising your CV and LinkedIn to be findable, then systematically using CV Databases to always be top of the pile.

Whether you're recruiting or job hunting be accountable, embrace discomfort, and take the steps that will find improvement and see a better outcome.

I can help.