A common theme among the employers I partner with is that they value openness, honesty, integrity, professionalism, and quality of work.

It's not exactly a mind-blowing revelation, yet it may surprise you that I rarely talk about these things when I'm marketing my services, despite being principles I place emphasis on.

There are two reasons.

The first is, shouldn't these things be a given, rather than something to sing loud about? The basics of decent service, surely?

The second is that it's a rare piece of recruitment marketing that doesn't extol how honest that agency is, their peerless integrity; how they're disrupting the terrible market with innovation and good candidate experience.

So why bother saying it all when everyone else uses that as a differentiator and promise, especially those that say it and then behave completely differently.

It's a bit like saying "I'm Spartacus!" just before everyone gets crucified.

Or 'Yes, but I'm honest!'... well, of course, you would say that.

Instead, I try to embody these values in everything I do and I ask that I am held accountable when I get it wrong. It's why my headline is "I recruit right:" with a colon, and it's why I describe these things as Behaviours rather than Values on my website.

My behaviours are visible in everything I do. Sometimes I get it wrong, and I'll always own these mistakes and learn from them.

And it's your experience of my behaviours that matter most, whether candidate or employer, in how my values are seen.

If you ask the employers I partner with what they think of me, I'm sure they'll say the same.