You win some...

So, kind of a frustrating week at work. Yes, I know I don't blog about work, except it was my font of enlightenment this week. Life is like a box of chocolates, you know?

My business, by the way, is human trafficking. Yes, really. In my professional life I'm an executive recruiter - a headhunter in everyday parlance. Its been an interesting and sometimes lucrative gig, but obviously tough in an economy that spent last year shedding jobs at a record pace, with this year seeing an uptick, but only slightly. Now we're eating bugs instead of sawdust, if you catch my drift. Enough to live on but nowhere near enough to thrive on. Our industry has shed roughly half the folks who were in it at the start of 2008, and not a one is eating as well as they were back then. It is a tough job in the best of circumstances, and these aren't those...

Anyway, Thursday morning we were nearing the end of a long week of negotiations on a high-level deal I was brokering. In my business these days, every deal is tedious. Clients are reluctant to spend top dollar in a market that is supposedly awash in qualified desperate talent, and candidates are busting their humps trying to get all they can from the deal, reluctant to cheaply turn loose of their bird in the hand, if you catch my drift. Trying to get all they can from someone who doesn't want to spend a penny more than required. Are you feeling the disconnect yet?

This project was made more tedious by the fact that the hiring company, while strongly financed, is effectively a start-up in a very precarious sector in which the talent pool is quite sparse, and the candidate they'd finally settled on was passive - meaning he is gainfully and securely employed by a sound company and wasn't looking for a new opportunity when I found him, with very strong compensation and benefits, and with no real threat to his position. To use the a sock-hop analogy, he was the handsomest boy in the room by far, albeit one quiet and quite comfortable standing in the corner by himself watching everyone else spinning and gyrating and making fools of themselves on the dance floor...

Without going into details, he knocked the socks off his suitor, to the degree their socks were knockable. They had multiple visits by phone and in person, and a love fest ensued. Earlier in the year they'd settled on two other prospects not from my stable, but had been unsuccessful in their approach to either, which is why I was invited into the game. This go-round they informed me they had settled on my candidate, setting aside other contenders and confident they could get him into bed or up to the altar or both. Neither party would be super specific in how far they were willing to go to get the deal done, as, if you'll recall, the buyer is reluctant to pay and the seller is reluctant to sell. He was open about his top concerns, and these were shared with the client, who crafted a fairly generous offer for the market and their richest to date by far. Unfortunately, it only responded weakly to his three major concerns, while offering a few perks that he liked but hadn't asked for, and which he didn't value overly highly. Uh-oh...

Without boring you to death with detail, suffice to say that the week which could and should have been spent in hearty celebration of a deal well done instead devolved into protracted and intense bargaining, with both parties talking past each other, acting on their own fears and concerns rather than listening closely to the other and seeking to find a workable middle ground. Sort of like Washington, now that I think of it...

On Thursday morning, while conversing with my client, he said, "You must have the worst job in the world. You get the right people together, share information as best you can to help make the deal work, but in the end you have absolutely no control over the outcome. None." Welcome to my world...

In my last conversation with the candidate yesterday, he told me I'd been wonderful to work with, that it had been an interesting experience, and shared his view that nobody had lost anything in the process. In the end the client had just proven unwilling to adequately address his concerns. The client indicated that they remain impressed with my work - said that he was proud of their effort and of the package they'd offered, which was indeed impressive, and that the candidate was unreasonable. And so, after a process which took more than three weeks of intensive closing activity following a months-long search, the candidate was right where he started with little likelihood of advancing his career in the exponential manner this opportunity afforded. The clients, proud of their steadfastness, remain without a Chief Operating Officer. And I am left in the dust with nothing to show for my efforts...

I told a few friends yesterday evening that I really wished I still drank, as this would definitely have been one of those evenings, if ever there was one. Instead, I sat in my Friday night AA meeting and listened more closely than usual to the Serenity Prayer we open with: "God, grant me the serenity to accept those things I cannot change, the strength to change those things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

Amen.