Before entering the world of work, life was so easy! No real responsibilities, no commitments, just yourself and your hobbies. In reality, there is so much more to any job than you can imagine from face value. I wanted to share my views on how my expectations of working within the recruitment industry and the reality differ, which may be useful for anyone looking to enter the world of recruitment.
“Everyone wants a job” – I thought it’d be a walk in the park…!
Previously, as someone with little knowledge on the mechanics of recruitment, I thought how hard can it be to find someone a job? With such a high level of growth within the recruitment industry, and so many candidates on the job market, it can be easy to have a predetermined vision that this is going to be easy. How difficult can it be to look through CV’s until a shining gem appears and then send them off for an interview? Well in fact, pretty difficult. There are so many moments where a hiring process can fall apart, and without understanding the challenges which you might face and how to overcome them, this happens. Remember, nothing is as easy as it looks on face value, learn from your mistakes and stay motivated!
The highs and the lows
Looking through the job adverts you see, thirty-five thousand pounds plus OTE, great incentives and benefits, fast-paced career progression, the list really goes on. And don’t get me wrong, recruitment can offer all of this if you put in the effort. But on paper, you couldn’t get a much better job proposition. The highs in recruitment defiantly come with their benefits, but it can’t always be just highs. For example, it can be soul destroying the first time you put in the leg-work for a candidate, for them to disappear of the face of the earth! Just remember, there are plenty more fish in the sea. Relish the highs, and bounce back from the lows.
There is so much more to the job than first anticipated
Looking through CV’s, calling candidates, conducting interviews and doing the odd bit of research. Is that all you may ask? Of course not, I wasn’t that complacent! But joking aside, it is easy to look at the day to day responsibilities and think that that is all there is to it. There are so many little things which can be easily dismissed as being unimportant. This could be for example reading the news and staying up to date on what is going on within your market, and trust me I was never an avid news reader! But since having it drilled into me for the last couple of months I have already directly seen benefits and scenarios where having this underlying knowledge helps. It’s important to take on board everything learnt from your seniors; they have been in your shoes before!
Although my expectations and reality differed and I was unaware of the extent of the rollercoaster, it’s all part of the journey. And in fact, after working within recruitment for almost 3 months, I couldn’t have made a better decision!
Oscar Brown
Associate Recruitment Consultant – TRM Recruitment
2016 was a crazy year, Brexit, Donald Trump and Leicester City winning the Premier League. 2016 was also the year, I started my own business. At 22, I went into partnership with Tom Markham to join TRM Recruitment as a Director leaving a secure, well paid job behind, which has resulted in my most successful year of my career to date. I wanted to share my key learns from the past 12 months for someone in a similar position to myself last year and possibly thinking about making a similar transition.
You don’t know all the answers.
And so, you shouldn’t. The title “Director” comes with its own weight that I had never experienced before, an expectation almost that you should know the answers to every problem that will arise in business. The reality of the situation is that you don’t. You will go through endless trials and errors, make mistakes – it’s all part of it. Analyse a situation and trust yourself to make the right call.
Get used to playing in goal, centre half on the wing and upfront.
In previous roles, I only had to worry about myself, my billings, my targets etcccc and only playing one role within a business, do deals! Working in a start-up you are not only responsible for that, but also the accounts, invoices, marketing, branding, website the list really goes on. It is incredibly easy to feel and become overwhelmed with these tasks/responsibilities. Prioritise and delegate, you can’t do everything.
Take breaks & make time for your hobby.
This has been a major learn over the past 12 months, taking time away from the desk when necessary, rewind back to February 2016, I can remember seeing 30 minutes of daylight over the course of three days when I nipped out to grab lunch each day. It is incredibly easy to get absorbed by the business, especially when it’s at such an early stage, that it’s hard to take a step back. Taking breaks throughout the day help to refresh the mind and refocus on the daily tasks. It is also important to make regular time to pursue your hobbies and having extended holidays throughout the year, to completely refresh yourself. Working while burnt out is no fun!
Invest smart
Working in a small business every investment matters. You make good ones, you make bad ones. It happens. Too many bad investments will not only strip cash flow, but will limit growth within the business. You will receive many sales calls on a weekly basis, promising all kinds of stuff, that it becomes hard to tell what’s good and what’s not. Invest logically. When making, decisions based on emotion it can lead to mistakes, take a step back, understand the core points and understand if your business really needs this. A lot of products/services sound interesting but not many back up the impressive sales pitch!
Back yourself
Being significantly younger than your peers in a role it is easy not to be taken seriously, although not the baby face I once was (5 years in sales has certainly helped the ageing process.) I’m still in a role that most people will take on 10+ years my senior. The best way to be taken seriously, is know your stuff, be confident in what you do, back who you are and what you’re trying to achieve and most importantly be yourself!
Leave each day with a smile on your face
Now I know this sounds very cheesy or the type of thing you would read in a motivational book, but it genuinely helps. You have bad days and last year, there was certainly a few, but it’s only one day – don’t take it home to your family/friends forget about it and repair the mistakes the next day. If you allow that bad day to affect you, it will quickly turn into a bad week/month which can be catastrophic for any small business. Brush yourself down, enjoy your evening and go again.
Enjoy it
Embrace the challenge and enjoy it! Harder than it sounds when its 8pm halfway through the month and your pipeline has fell apart, it’s all part of the journey! Enjoy it!
Thanks
Eddie Turford
Director
Firstly, a declaration of interest, I work in recruitment to recruitment, having previous worked in agency recruitment for many years, so I am without doubt heavily biased. I would also like to point out that I am not suggesting internal recruiters aren’t capable – often the complete opposite is true. There are many occasions where internal recruitment teams and agencies work hand in hand, this a great model. My contention is that companies which “ban” agencies to pursue a 100% internal recruitment strategy will struggle.
Born in a different Labour Market:
Much of the RPO/IR growth was between 2008 – 2010. Back then it made more practical sense. There was a huge number of talented individuals on the market across a number of sectors looking for jobs, primarily because it was an incredibly unstable time. Global FTSE equivalent sized companies were disappearing , redundancies were common place, therefore finding experienced individuals was a far more straight forward exercise. Today the reverse is true.
It’s an unrealistic proposition:
I am fortunate enough to see first-hand the amount of resource and skill our hiring customers put into finding candidates for their clients. They have teams of many people, more niche than I thought possible, with researchers mapping out markets, tracking careers, supported by long term networks in a given market. In internal recruitment this is virtually impossible unless you have a huge Internal recruitment team. Typically an internal recruitment manager will cover at least 5 or 6 separate job verticals, therefore logistically, its is not achievable for them to network to anywhere near the same level of detail as their agency counterparts. Therefore unless superhuman, it is difficult to credibly argue they can find the same caliber of candidates on an going basis, not because don’t have the ability, but because the don’t have the time.
It doesn’t offer enough to candidates:
Whether you an Accountant, a Business Analyst, a Clinical Research Analyst or a Java developer, if you can be tempted to consider other opportunities, would one be enough? Agency recruiters can offer candidates a broad spectrum of opportunity – size of business, personality of hiring manager, role scope, this is simply because they have more opportunities. For internal recruiters, they only have the one opportunity to discuss, therefore is sellers market – does this really offer enough.
Cost Savings are misleading:
There are cost savings to internal recruitment, this is why it exists. But these cost savings are often only released at the point of hire. A friend of mine is a sales manager for software house which “bans” recruiters. They have one internal recruiter covering a 250 man business. They have 3 unfilled sales roles – now for over 6 months. Surely the loss of sales revenue, over stretch on the existing employees, loss of client contact equates to more than a £10,000 recruitment fee? My friend often says he see’s CV’s from recruiters who would be (at least on paper) perfect – but he can’t interview them.
You leave your business exposed:
More often than not, a recruiter will split his or her market in two, companies to recruit for, companies to headhunt from. If your message to the market is we will never use a recruiter, which one of these two categories is more likely?
There is value to 3rd party consultancy
I often think the broader value of recruiters is underestimated. Take the example an experienced Middle Office Banking recruiter. Will this consultant know more about Product control then a Product controller? – clearly not. But they will know more about product control recruitment then anyone else – yes – because this is all they do. They will know which companies offer counter offers, which companies underpay, which teams are unsettled. This can only be released if you spend all day everyday working a market.
Once again I would like to state I am not saying there is no place of internal recruitment. There clearly is, and this can often work very effectively, and many internal recruiters are the excellent at what they do. But “banning” agencies to me is madness.
Lets be honest, Recruitment isn’t well known for its staff retention, work life balance and relaxed working environment, with that said some Recruitment firms are achieving staff retention rates of 85% in an industry, which the standard is closer to 40%/50%. Working in a Rec2Rec you get a pretty good understanding to why this is.
I would say that at least 7/10 Recruiters have worked at a firm that they didn’t really fit into, myself included, whether it be the people your working with, the market you’re recruiting into, the management
Cultural fit within Recruitment is possibly the most important factor, more so than any other Recruiting market I’ve worked in before. The shock is firms are still disregarding this and hiring people based solely on if they can do the job are struggling to keep people. The firms that are keeping people 2 years + (which is when they become truly profitable) are hiring people on Values initially and then there ability to do the job.
This is undoubtedly one of the main reasons why Recruiters leave the industry, working 10/12 hours day without any flexibility, Consultants having to take half days due to having a football match kicking off at 8pm or being booed off the sales floor if you leave before 7pm, (both happening in the last 6 months.)
Consultants giving their life up to work for these businesses but can’t play football on a Wednesday evening or go to dinner with friends, because Recruitment is all that matters. The Recruitment firms that offer this flexibility and trust to their employees are the ones who are keeping their consultants, and from that doing quite well.
I guess if all the businesses had a perfect hiring model and culture, I would be out of the job. Keep up the poor work!