Client at work is causing me so much stress

[corelights7]

I've worked in recruitment for almost 7 years now and I've definitely encountered my fair share of difficult clients. You really need to have a thick skin, and I've managed to keep positive even when dealing with some rude and unpleasant people at times.

I recently started a new position as an internal partner in the education field. I started working closely with the head teacher of one of our schools around 3 months ago. It seems like she took an instant dislike to me and has complained about me at every opportunity. I know I'm not perfect, but her communication is so poor, yet she blames me when things go wrong. Here are a few examples:

1. I've sent her several application forms for review, and her response has been, "book her in at 3 on Friday." She never specifies who she wants to interview, so it turns into a guessing game.

1. There have been times when she asked me to set up interviews but only provided the time without mentioning the day, which forced me to follow up with her multiple times for more details. She then complained and said that I was taking too long to set up interviews.

1. We've had a couple of candidates show up for interviews and say different things, like they can't work the specified days or want a higher salary. I understand that this is frustrating as it wastes time, but I can’t control that. I screen every candidate before booking them in, asking about their availability, salary expectations, etc, and some candidates do lie to get to the interview stage. This is a well known issue in recruitment. I tried explaining this to her, but she wouldn't hear it and insisted I needed to be more thorough in my screening process.

I have more examples, but what happened last week really pushed me over the edge. I submitted a candidate on Monday and followed up on Thursday for an update but didn't get a response. Then, on Friday at 8:30pm, she messaged me on Teams asking me to set up an interview for Monday morning. I was with my family and couldn't reply, but she messaged me again at 9pm.

I responded to let her know I couldn’t call the candidate that evening - honestly, I don’t think it’s appropriate to call someone about a job application at 9pm. Plus, I was off for the weekend, spending time with my family and didn’t have my work laptop with me. I mentioned that I would try to sort it out on Sunday when I got back home, but I also asked if there were any other dates available since it was such short notice. She ended up complaining about me to HR, saying I was being difficult. I proposed that we set up a weekly call to go over applications together and confirm dates and times, but she said she doesn't have the time.

I’ve talked to my manager about the whole situation, but he’s not really much help. He doesn’t like confrontation and would rather keep the peace, so he just tells me to ignore her. If it was just her being rude to me, I could handle it, but she keeps involving my manager and HR, creating a really uncomfortable atmosphere and making me feel on edge. She picks at every thing I do and it’s causing me so much stress. It’s like she expects me to be a mind reader.

Am I being unreasonable / shit at my job or are her expectations unfair?

Gosh OP. No advice but that sounds awful (I would go so far to say that she is bullying you). You are definitely not being unreasonable!

are you part of a union?

@bumble432 thank you and unfortunately no. it’s a private company if that makes any difference.

Stop reading Teams messages after work hours, unless you're paid big bucks.

Are you in a position to suggest to your manager that someone else takes over the account?

I would have just shot the candidate an email at 9pm on Friday. I’m sure they don’t mind a ‘late’ message on a working day if it’s about a job that they’re interested in.

Longer term, if your boss is not supporting you, then I would start looking for another job. You can’t really change a ‘client is always right’ culture in an organisation, IME. They’d rather lose you than stand up to the client.

Your manager is telling you to ignore her and HR will bat complaints back to him, as this kind of petty squabbling (from her, you're not petty) isn't their job to deal with. So do as he says and ignore her idiocy. Keep calming asking for the details you need and don't rise to any provocation.

Bonus is that it'll really annoy her.

Let's assume that you're not going to leave straight away and you need to find a way of working with this woman. What I would do:

Ignore any contact outside working hours - don't look at Teams, you don't want her to see you've read something. She'll soon learn that Friday evening is too late to ask to see someone on a Monday.

Tell her you appreciate her calendar / diary is busy so you'd like to set up access to Calendly or Whenavailable and ask her to pick times and dates from there for interviews. She will need to specify who she wants to see and if she doesn't you can ask but obviously, you can't arrange it until she tells you who, it's basic information. Tell her you need to give candidates x notice so give her times and dates for the following week and week after. If she gives 6 times and you've got 3 candidates you can work with them to fit them in.

Completely ignore any bitching or moaning to HR or anyone else and just carry on doing your job as best you can. Be polite, professional and calm, kill her with kindness. She might come round, she might not, but at least your professional integrity will be intact

When candidates lie before or after interview all you can do is say "I screened them, they said they were fine with £1k a year, so let's move on if they told you £100k" - you can't control that, all you can do is confirm you did screen them.

Respond factually and calmly to any stroppy emails, the people copied will likely roll their eyes and move on.

Good luck.

Why are you reading and responding to her messages in your own time?

Knock that on the head and get firm with this bitch.

Personally I'd say to your manager you no longer feel comfortable working with her as her behaviour has placed you in a conflicting situation when talking to potential candidates about what the work environment may be like for them taking up any role. It is clearly better that you both have a different allocation

Does the head teacher have a PA or secretary in charge of diary management whose details you could ask for? Then she only needs to confirm which candidate she wants to see?

Absolutely this. You are out of office, and as you’ve correctly said, so are the candidates.

If she is in a MAT I would also be inclined to speak to her superior.

I am in your sector and her demands are unfeasible. I’m the buyer in this instance, I make it my job to partner specific recruiters who understand the needs of my schools.

I will also say this, being a HT gives some people a God complex.

Frankly speaking if her school was being run properly she wouldn’t need a recruiter, that’s money going out of teaching and learning into thin air. She should be able to recruit via the many online platforms for nothing but ad buy.

I think you need to just tell your manager you can no longer work with this woman. Tell them how uncommunicative she is and how stressful her behaviour is and how impossible she is to work with.

Your manager needs to pull his finger out and have a word. If he doesn't want to, then he can pass the client on to somebody else in the team or he can manage her himself. You don't have to subject yourself to this treatment and you can refuse to deal with someone causing you any kind of anxiety or stress