What Ever Happened To Loyalty In Business?

Once upon a time in the world, people could count on working for a company for many years.  Not so any more.

These days, most ad agencies only hire for specific accounts.  If those businesses leave, chances are very good that employees working on them will be terminated rather than rotated on to another business, no matter how good a job they are doing.

Several years ago, I wrote about HR telling me that it took too much time and trouble to rotate executives on to other accounts and that it is easier to let them go instead.  I wonder if the executives who are running most of the big agencies today, especially those who have been at them for many years, could actually still be in place if the policies of today were in effect years ago; surely almost all of them at some point in their career worked on an account which fired their agency.  This is not just a problem with ad agencies, because the lack of loyalty permeates business as well as our entire society.

It is almost as if business is giving the entire population a message telling people that allegiance to those who have done a good job is really unnecessary.

Looking back on a thirty plus career in recruiting, I see the lack of loyalty constantly.  I certainly do not expect a young account executive who I placed twenty years ago to be faithful and thankful to me for placing them in an early job.  However, I am constantly surprised by senior executives – department heads, EVPs, presidents and chairmen – who I have recently placed, who then never really thank me for getting them a great job or, in turn, give me the assignment(s) to help them staff.

Their excuse is often that they cannot tell human resources who to use as a recruiter.  I understand that, but how about an introduction to the people responsible for hiring?  It is a subtle way of handling the problem.

It isn’t just me and it isn’t just about recruiting.  I can think of a senior financial person at an Omnicom agency who was actually semi-retired from one of their agencies, but still a consultant for them.  He gave me an assignment to find a president for one of their agencies.  He did the initial interviewing and, together with me, helped the final candidate through the process of interviewing with senior Omnicom executives. He provided the candidate with invaluable inside information and then helped the candidate negotiate his job. He spoke to the candidate almost every day during the long hiring process, which lasted over five months. After the president was hired, this particular candidate, in over ten years now, did not give me a single assignment.  And worse, he did not return the calls from the Omnicom consultant.  His agency had huge financial problems which the consultant could have helped him resolve, but he never even returned his calls. It was beyond rude, but, sadly, not uncommon.

I am not complaining; I accept all this as part of business and life in general.  People ask me for advice (I have helped hundreds of executives negotiate their jobs, or counseled them, even if I am not their recruiter.  I never charge for this advice because it is something I like to do – as do many recruiters – but once these executives are hired, I never hear from them again – sometimes not even to tell me that they got the job.)

Beyond that, as every recruiter knows, there are people I have placed in jobs which have actually made their careers and they, too, never call again.  It acceptable but strange.

And the truth is, I think this behavior is tacitly accepted because of the way in which companies do business.  They have made disloyalty and ungratefulness permissible.