“A river cuts through rock, not because of its power, but because of its persistence.”

It’s one of those quotes that gets thrown around a lot. I heard it on a Tiktok video just this week.

You see it on LinkedIn. Someone sticks it over a mountain photo. Everyone nods and scrolls on.

But spend more than five minutes in recruitment and you’ll realise it’s one of the truest descriptions of this industry.

Recruitment doesn’t reward the smartest recruiter.

It doesn’t always reward the most talented.

It rewards the recruiter who consistently and persistently just keeps showing up. Setback after setback,

The one who keeps making calls after a placement falls over.

The one who says – “you know what, I might just follow up once more, just in case”.

The one who backs themselves after billing $50,000 one month and absolutely nothing the next.

Persistence isn’t just a nice quality to have in recruitment.

It’s literally the entire game.

Recruitment isn’t hard because it’s complicated.

It’s hard because it’s relentless. It’s non-stop and it’s up one minute and down the next.

• Candidates pull out.
• Clients change their minds.
• Offers get declined.
• Counteroffers happen.
• Budgets disappear overnight.
• Markets slow down.

Recruitment is one of the few professions where you can do everything right… and still lose.

You can source the perfect candidate.

Manage the process flawlessly.

Negotiate a great offer.

Then receive a phone call saying they’ve accepted a counteroffer.

And that doesn’t make you a bad recruiter.

It makes you a recruiter.

So, the question isn’t whether setbacks happen – the question is how quickly you recover from them.

I talk about resilience A LOT because it has been my experience over the 18+ years I’ve been riding this rollercoaster that the longer you stay emotionally attached to yesterday’s disappointment, the less likely you’ll be able to see and jump on today’s opportunities.

Persistence does not equal stubbornness..

This is where a lot of people get it wrong.

Persistence isn’t doing the same thing over and over hoping for a different result.

That’s just freakin exhausting.

Think about the river.

It doesn’t smash into the rock harder every day.

It simply keeps flowing. It adjusts. It finds another angle.

It slowly wears resistance down through consistent pressure.

The best recruiters operate the same way.

They’re constantly asking themselves:

• Is there a better way to approach this client?
• Should I change my questioning?
• Am I spending my time on the right market?
• Is this actually the highest-value activity I could be doing today?

It is 100% key to me that you constantly review your habits and activities and it’s not because what you’re doing is necessarily “bad”.

But because persistence without learning is just stubbornness.

But persistence with reflection becomes mastery.

Most recruiters that quit recruitment don’t fail.

In my experience, there’s 3 main reasons recruiters leave recruitment:

• They genuinely are ready to try something new
• They’re burnt out / tired
• They are not seeing results (which IMO is usually quitting too early).

And it’s the last one I want to to talk about here. Quitting too early.

I get it – you don’t want to come across as that pushy, transactional recruiter – the industry has largely moved on from that mode. Almost every top biller I have spoken to, coached or trained takes very much a more consultative approach. We want to be the trusted advisor.

But we do sometimes quit on placements too early.

The client says they don’t need help or use recruiters – so we just leave it at that instead of following up a few weeks later.

The candidate says they’re not interested in a new role – so we don’t follow up with them AFTER they’ve had time to process the info you’ve given them.

One of my Junior recs a few years back learnt this lesson in a big way. It was a $70k mine planning placement. It went cold. Or at least it seemed to. The obstacles for the candidate accepting seemed too high to surmount. She decided to call 2 weeks after the candidate had said “they just couldn’t make it work” just to see if anything had changed and the candidate had decided to accept the role. $70k in the bank – because of one last follow up.

Then there’s the quitting the industry too soon part.

How often have you seen junior recruiter with a crazy amount of potential do 3-6 months in the industry and leave without seeing results.

Markets take time to build.

Persistence takes work – especially initially.

Sometimes the results are closer than they think.

And it’s this that should teach you that persistence often looks remarkably boring.

Another phone call.

Another email.

Another conversation.

A bit more patience/

Over time, those ordinary, boring actions create big results.

Resilience is persistence under pressure

Anyone can stay persistent when they’re winning. That’s easy. Real persistence shows itself when nothing seems to be working.

If there’s a hill for me to die on, it’s that resilience isn’t something you’re born with.

It’s a muscle.

And like every muscle, it only grows when it’s under resistance.

You don’t build resilience when every placement sticks.

You build it when several fall over in the same week and you still show up Monday morning ready to recruit again.

The key is learning to shorten your recovery time.

You’re allowed to be disappointed.

You’re allowed to be frustrated.

You’re allowed to have a bad afternoon.

Just don’t unpack and live there.

The faster you move from emotion back into action, the more resilient you become.

The best recruiters take more shots

Think about the world’s greatest athletes (you know I love a sports analogy).

• Michael Jordan missed thousands of shots.
• Tiger Woods didn’t win every tournament.
• Babe Ruth struck out almost as often as he hit home runs.

But nobody remembers the misses.

They remember that those people kept taking the next shot.

Recruitment works exactly the same way.

The recruiters billing seven figures each year don’t magically avoid rejection.

They simply generate enough quality opportunities that rejection becomes part of the maths.

If you only make a handful of calls because you’re afraid of hearing “no”, every rejection feels enormous but if you’re consistently creating opportunities, rejection becomes background noise – just another number in the game.

Volume doesn’t replace quality.

But quality combined with consistency becomes incredibly difficult to beat.

The science backs it up

This isn’t just a motivational, rah rah sesh.

It aligns closely with what researchers have been saying for years.

Psychologist Angela Duckworth describes “grit” as the combination of passion and perseverance towards long-term goals. Her research found that grit often predicts long-term success better than talent alone.

Carol Dweck’s work on the growth mindset found that people who view setbacks as opportunities to learn persist significantly longer than those who see failure as proof of ability.

Neither researcher suggests talent is unimportant.

Their point is simpler.

Talent gets you started.

Persistence keeps you going long enough to become exceptional.

So how do you build persistence?

The good news?

Persistence isn’t a personality trait.

It’s a skill and like every other skill out there, it can be trained.

1. Reduce your recovery time

Stop trying to avoid disappointment.

Instead, get better at recovering from it.

Lose a placement?

Feel it.

Learn from it (like literally write down the learning from it)

Say out loud – “okay, next.”

2. Fall in love with consistency

Anyone can have a huge month.

The professionals stack good weeks together over years.

Consistency compounds.

Analyse your big months – how many interviews did you get. How many roles did you work. What were your ratios.

This data will give you a data-led blueprint on how to do it again and again.

3. Focus on the controllables

You can’t control whether a candidate accepts an offer.

You can control whether you prepared them properly.

You can’t control whether a client hires.

You can control whether you presented great candidate matches, followed up well and acted as a true advisor.

Your confidence grows when you judge yourself by actions, effort and personal growth – not outcomes.

4. Keep refining your process

Persistence doesn’t mean repeating yesterday forever.

Review your desk.

Challenge your habits.

Find small improvements.

Then repeat them.

5. Remember why you’re doing it

If you’re commission hungry and that works for you? Great. Keep going.

But understand that money for money’s sake as a motivator, rarely works forever. And I bet that if you think about the reasons WHY you wanted to make commish – there will be something more behind it.

Whether it’s providing for your family.

Building your business.

Creating freedom.

Helping people change their careers.

Your “why” gives persistence somewhere to draw its strength from when motivation disappears. It brings back into focus why you keep going even after the sh*ttest of days.

If you don’t have a “why” or a sense of purpose – I highly recommend you sit down and think about it.

It could change everything for you.

If you’re leading a recruitment team…

My biggest advice for the recruitment leaders that I coach is don’t only celebrate placements with your team.

Celebrate persistence.

• Celebrate the recruiter who made the difficult follow-up.
• Celebrate the recruiter that cracked the client that said “they never work with recruiters”.
• The consultant who bounced back after losing a deal and found another candidate or another role.
• The team member who stayed consistent and positive through a slow market.

Because if you only reward outcomes, people start fearing failure.

If you reward persistence, people become resilient enough to create more outcomes.

Over time, that changes culture.

The river never argues with the rock

It doesn’t complain that progress feels slow.

It doesn’t wonder whether today’s effort mattered.

It simply keeps flowing.

Every single day.

Eventually, the rock gives way.

Recruitment works the same way.

The careers people admire aren’t usually built through one incredible month.

They’re built through thousands of small actions repeated over years.