What Your Recruiter Won’t Tell You About Getting Hired
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Executive search specialist Janice Wagner has spent 15 years headhunting at the top end of corporate South Africa — and she treats both the candidate and the company as her clients. In this episode of Meet My Business she talks with Hendrik Baird about leaving a decade in chartered accountancy, building a search firm from a loft with no staff and no sales training, and why it took nine months to land her first meeting.
She’s candid about an industry she says has forgotten it’s about people, and generous with practical advice: why graduates shouldn’t wait for January, what not to say in an interview, how ATS systems and AI are changing the job hunt, and why she thinks South Africa is on a better trajectory than the headlines suggest. A warm, straight-talking listen.
She’s candid about an industry she says has forgotten it’s about people, and generous with practical advice: why graduates shouldn’t wait for January, what not to say in an interview, how ATS systems and AI are changing the job hunt, and why she thinks South Africa is on a better trajectory than the headlines suggest. A warm, straight-talking listen.
Chapters
- 00:00 Cold open — the IT vacancy nobody could fill
- 00:13 Welcome & who is Janice Wagner
- 00:55 A typical day
- 01:18 What the people closest to her say she does
- 01:37 Why she started — and the humbling first nine months
- 02:23 What executive search actually is
- 02:54 Working across industries
- 03:14 South Africa's unemployment problem
- 04:15 ATS systems, LinkedIn and guiding young people
- 05:35 The biggest early challenge: money and brand
- 07:01 What keeps her going
- 07:20 Hiring her first staff
- 07:52 What she wishes she'd known: let go, work on the business
- 09:17 What surprised her: still being here, and Covid
- 10:07 Explaining the work in detail
- 11:51 Her ideal client
- 13:04 The candidate's journey
- 13:57 The employer's journey
- 14:44 What makes her different: her network
- 15:26 The industry's bad name
- 16:24 How to solve unemployment: SMEs and tax breaks
- 18:11 What changes for a client: trust
- 19:17 Talent planning, explained
- 20:19 Word-of-mouth and bringing skills back to Africa
- 21:30 A contrarian read on the market
- 22:41 Do job boards work?
- 24:24 AI and the job market
- 25:05 Advice for new graduates
- 26:48 When a placement goes wrong
- 28:12 How the opening story resolved
- 29:52 Why she does this work
- 30:33 How to get hold of her
- 31:25 Best advice for job seekers and employers
