"I've got some feedback for you about one of your people."

How many times have you heard that in your career?  More importantly, when you hear that, do you think what I think?

"Oh man. This isn't going to be good."

Feedback. Too often a synonym for problems.

So imagine my surprise recently when I heard a slight variation of this.  I help run a great recruiting firm called Kinetix - look us up here. An HR executive using our firm reached out to me with a slight customization to the above generalization: 

"Kris, I've got some feedback for you on one of your recruiters."

Ready for the feedback?  It wasn't bad - it was delivered in a neutral fashion, but it was music to my ears!

"Kris, our hiring manager mentioned that one of the candidates said that the recruiter was calling him too late at night."

Wait, what?

Recruiters calling people at night - because candidates are hard to get a hold of during the day, because they're working hard and dedicated to our client, because their sense of urgency is off the charts - is kind of the dream state when you run a recruiting firm.

<insert Hotline Bling joke here>

Do we expect people to be working at night?  No, not under normal circumstances. Do we salute those about to rock (calling candidates) at 8pm because they're in it to win it?

Hell yeah we do.

So yes - I'm following up to make sure the time of night, the context and everything else about the late calls is acceptable on all fronts.  My HR executive client gave me the feedback in a neutral fashion - but I know she got it as well.

To that recruiter? Hey <name redacted>, be careful about making calls too late at night. <picture me with long, hard sustained winking as I finish that sentence>