Making placements is hard and recruiters always have various theories for their anticipated success or failure on any given position search.  Most typically it begins with such things as their depth of knowledge of the company, the hiring process, position requirements, their knowledge of the available talent pool, experience working with the hiring official and the preferred personality traits of the team in addition to many other moving parts.  However, the hardest placement that you’re ever likely to make is the one that follows a recently successful placement with the same company and manager.  What typically occurs is that the hiring official’s job description includes the phrase “if I could just clone (insert your candidates name here) then I’d have this position filled”.

Since cloning humans is still science fiction I’d love to tell to run away from this job order, but we know you can’t….because they’re a client.  So do yourself a favor and reaffirm the realities of the market place with the client, remind them that while you’ll be striving for that “perfect” fit that no two people are alike, and that they need to be realistic about candidates and compare them against the job description and not your prior placement when determining their viability.  In short if you can get your hiring official to look at your candidates realistically, then you can make this placement.