How to Break Your Face

I love it when I hear or read the phrase "hit the ground running".  I know what it is supposed to mean:

(contractor version):

"We don't have the time to train you.  You must get meaningful work done your first day on the job, figure out where we hid everything that you need, don't back-talk, and have ten times the productivity of our lazy and entitled employees, who we can't fire because they have legal rights. You will be fired, with no notice, at the earliest available opportunity."

(employee version):

 "We don't have the time to train you.  You must get meaningful work done your first week on the job, all while plowing through our tiresome and enormous stack of access requests for the resources you need to use, interminable meetings which are little more than talk-fests for our manager wannabees, badly designed and poorly configured workflow systems, and terribly written requirements / user stories to describe the work you are supposed to do.  Questions? Read our minds!"

Staffing companies, almost always desperate for customers, are particularly vulnerable to this old trope. It is false to fact, even for highly experienced people like me.  Here is another perceptive take on the issue:

Clueless Employer Phrase “Hit The Ground Running”

I have 18 years of (hard) Oracle work under my belt, and every single job had a non-trivial learning curve (see my article on managing remote workers); the last one had an immense learning curve because of the sheer complexity of the system we managed.

Hit the ground running?  Try this sometime, see what the results will be for yourself.  Find a friend with a pickup truck, and a soft, grassy field.  Bring a first-aid kit (you will be needing it) and your health insurance card.  Make certain your friend knows how to get you to a nearby hospital fast.  I'd wear some body padding, perhaps a football helmet.

Have your friend drive through the field at 5 mph, while you kneel on the open tailgate of the truck, facing forward.  Your task is to hop down to the ground and literally hit the ground running.

I suppose a stunt man could master this trick with time, but a newbie (that would be you) will almost certainly hit the ground and fall on his face, perhaps hitting the tailgate of the truck.  More likely, you will hit the ground (not moving) with forward momentum (moving) and not be able to stay upright. 5 mph (slow for a car) is 7.3 feet per second.  Your feet will stop cold, but your head and torso will still have a forward momentum of about 5 mph x your weight, suddenly converted to turning moment (flipping forward).  You will plow into the ground face-first with a very painful klunk, I guarantee.  Knee damage, facial damage can be expected at a minimum.

So, no one in their right mind would try this, save drunk cowboys.

In a job setting, "hitting the ground running" has analogous effects, you get in to the job site, but get slammed immediately by impossible demands, and no mercy (particularly for contractors).  Failure to produce miracles = immediate termination and subsequent damage to your marketability / career.  The resulting period of unemployment will cost more than the job was worth.

Were I you (and I do this routinely), I would point out that the phrase is meaningless and not something that is worthy of consideration.  If the recruiter insists, politely decline on the grounds that the requirements do not match the compensation (always acceptable) and move on to the next opportunity.  Eventually, recruiters will get the message.  After a longer period than that, clients (employers) will get the message.  Change will take even longer.  So let it be.