Recruitment Drive
“You’re not very good at your job, are you?” he asks me.
I’m standing out here in the middle of the day, the sun’s burning down, and I’m helping him stack firewood.
The things you’ll do for a client.
There are snakes out here, I’m sure, probably hiding in the log pile. We’re way out in the backblocks, a good hour from the nearest sealed road. And I don’t understand why anyone would want to have a fire on halfway through summer.
But I can’t be too fussy. Consulting’s a competitive market, so I don’t say no to any client requests. Especially not when the boss of a major city firm–who, I’m told, is seriously wealthy, if not a little eccentric–rings during his summer break and summons me out to talk personally.
“I’m not convinced you’re the best,” the CEO tells me. “You call yourself a recruitment consultant, but what do you give me? Huh?” He sneers, takes some of the timber away.
Twenty years on the corporate ladder, he says, and the only way to survive is if you’re hungry enough. “What about you? Do you have the hunger?”
I shrug. “I’ve sent people up here. Three possible candidates this week. Weren’t any of them suitable?”
The trouble is, I don’t know what happened. None of them even had the courtesy to ring back and tell me how their interviews here went.
“I gave you this simple job,” he says eventually, “to test you. Just get me someone to help me with my hobby.”
I’ve got to admit, his request was fairly simple: someone young, fit and comfortable being on an isolated community for a while. Maybe a backpacker, for example.
He takes a log and points out the fields, the smokehouse, the main building. “Look at this. My own little holiday retreat. Lots of privacy. No visitors, and a long way away from town. I just need someone around the place. Like I said, if you can help me get that, then maybe in the future we can see what work the company has for you.”
We keep on stacking wood, sharing the silence.
But the CEO can’t stay quiet for long. Clients never can. “The first one you sent me? Wouldn’t say a word. I couldn’t get her to say anything.
“And that guy, the second one? Hopeless.
“The third one, the student… well, he was keen, but…” He sighs one more time.
The heat is getting to us both. Sweat is falling into my eyes.
“I’ve got the hunger,” he tells me one more time. “Do you?”
He takes some more wood out of the pile and down to the smoking shed, calls me over. The room’s dark, full of fumes and a scent that mixes burning pine with something else. Sitting inside, slowly drying out in the heat, the three of them are lined up in a row, grinning at me from dead faces.
He pulls out a boning knife and a whetstone. He sits down, starts sharpening up, and looks me in the eye. “Well,” he asks, “are you going to join me?”
He’s right. I don’t have the hunger.
So I stay in my office these days, far away and down in the city. Every holiday, when he needs them, I send up some round-eyed innocents to the farm. I get paid extraordinarily well for my efforts and, if anyone asked, I’d have to admit that I’m more or less just prostituting myself now. I know that I’m no longer the slightly wide-eyed recruitment agent anymore.
In fact, these days I’m much more of a corporate headhunter.
