A question I often get asked is ‘Why do you work in recruitment?’
It is an interesting one as from early on in my career, I always had a very keen interest in recruitment. I studied the CILEX course with a law firm in Ormskirk but always knew in the back of my mind, as much as I loved studying Law, that I wanted to do something else with it.
I wanted to be a part of contributing to a firm in a different way than ‘fee earning’ and more on the side of growing a department or adding to a team. I had a really strong grasp of what works well in a law firm, what ‘type’ of people or personalities are suited to different roles etc, and so I wanted to develop this further.
From day one of starting in recruitment (5 years ago!), I knew that it was the right career move for me. I thoroughly enjoy the procedure of handling the recruitment cycle from start to finish and watching a candidate go through this process. I genuinely love every stage, the feeling of finding a suitable candidate and starting the process off with them, getting to know them and finding out what makes them ‘tick’ in their work and then setting myself the challenge of finding them their perfect role.
The reward at the end of this is simply a ‘thank you’ from the candidate or when they go out of their way to tell you how well it is going in their new job, or how happy they are that they moved. There really is no better feeling than that!
So what is the key to being successful in recruitment?
I find that the key to recruitment is being a ‘people’ person, you certainly need to have that buzz about you on a daily basis and always be ready for a chat. The job is about relationship building and after all, ‘people buy from people’. The challenges that come with this is everybody doesn’t always feel ‘buzzy’ every day, we all have our down days or when we feel more tired than usual and so it is important and challenging to pick yourself back up when feeling like that as it does then resonate into your work. That is why recruitment isn’t for everybody, but if you can succeed at it, it really is one of the most rewarding careers out there.
And then there is the client side as well. We spend time developing and building relationships with our clients in order to make sure that they know they can trust us with the development of their firm. We are representing their brand and so it is paramount that they know we will do this well and the trust is there to represent them professionally.
A great feeling is once you start developing those relationships and then clients come back to you time and time again, a very rewarding feeling that you know that you have done a good job for them!
On the whole, I think that recruitment is a very rewarding job choice. It is challenging, you have to be resilient as things can’t go well all the time, but when they do (and it is down to hard work!) the benefits far outweigh.
The main characteristics I personally think are needed to succeed in recruitment are:
- Resilience
- Bubbly personality
- Organised
- Professional
- Honest
If you think the above sounds like you, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend getting into recruitment, and please feel free to ask us any questions at all by contacting us here.
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We are hiring for a Resourcing Consultant to work in our head office in Lancaster. To find out more about this role, please click here. If you have experience of working in recruitment resourcing or are a graduate, please get in touch for a confidential discussion.
Established in 2009 we are recruitment specialists placing talented candidates in the legal, HR, finance and accountancy sectors.
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