The Career Cycle of a Recruiter

As I started to compose this article on the ‘Career Cycle of a Recruiter’ and it got me thinking about my own journey and why I decided to seek a career in recruitment. Like most people I didn’t really know what I wanted to do after I graduated from university with a degree in Sociology. Whilst I was thinking about what to do next, a family member suggested I look at recruitment, so I started doing my research and liked what I read, and I haven’t looked back since! Recruitment is about people, communication and building relationships and this is what I love doing. Flash forward nearly 7 years and getting the opportunity to work across 3 different sectors I’m glad I took onboard the advice from my family member.

After interviewing a group of our candidates and clients we have found everyone has their own reasons as to what led them to choose a career in recruitment. Please see below the first instalment from Tristan Davies the Recruitment Manager at Wyevale Garden Centres. We would like to thank Tristan for taking the time to contribute to this article and hope you enjoy reading it!

1.What led you into a career in recruitment?

Moving to London in 1999 securing a role as photographer with Madame Tussauds, I never thought of entering recruitment or HR in general. Working my way to management roles in an operational context, I began recruiting and training the team I had built which started my interest. We used to run group assessments and I always wanted the best candidate to join my team and not the team of one of my colleagues J, so I read up avidly on things like how to recruit, and spotting good candidates alongside articles and books on managing performance and team motivation, even body language etc. An opportunity presented itself (I will explain further below) which lead to recruitment.

2.How did you secure your first Recruitment role?

Whilst I was an operational manager, the then Learning and Development manager for Madame Tussaud’s London, was going to be going on Maternity leave. I expressed an interest as by this time I had been through our inhouse ‘train the trainer’ programme and had been running and help build some training courses. I got the secondment for 10 months and then moved back into operations. However just as I moved back across, the then recruitment manager had moved to surrey and applied and was successful for the recruitment role in Thorpe park, leaving a recruitment manager vacancy. I applied alongside around 6 others from the group, and a few colleague referral external applicants and got the role.

3.What were your main motivations for moving from L&D and Guest Experience into Recruitment?

Part of the reason was believing the recruitment process could be better for the candidate than the process we then had (and I had been through myself) alongside an interest in people and their development. I knew I wanted to move into a field where I could develop personally and at the same time be involved in change, recruitment and HR felt right. The business had also changed quite a lot and the way recruitment was run was still following the old-style business and culture model and I wanted to help the business grow.

4.How did you find the transition?

It was quite smooth. Again, I think because I knew the business, but had done research as much as I could and spoken to other people that enabled me to help identify where the difference could be made. I wasn’t and am still not the person who just does the 9-5, there has to be improvements and growth opportunities and there were quite few in my first role. Naturally I had to work at the role and keep going with growing my knowledge, but I had the support of a very good Director for my first 6 months that supported and encouraged.

Although it was a recruitment manager role, over the next couple of years, I had exposure to disciplinarians and sickness/absence management, changes in policies, redundancy and TUPE (lightly) which enabled me to gain my CIPD through experienced assessment.

5. What tips would you give someone interested in moving into Recruitment?

I have a couple of tips:

• You have to be a people person- if you don’t like speaking to or being around people that you know you can help to grow and succeed, then do something else. Recruitment is more than filling a seat.
• Embrace change–Most recruitment is aligned to company values/culture that will change with the passage of time, and you will be involved in helping deliver that change.
• Have patience– You may identify/believe what needs to be changed, but in most cases, you have to build relationships to encourage that change. There’s always internal push back at times, so take time (within reason) to build relationships, understand the business and identify opportunities as a partner.

Should you wish to learn more about how we can support you in hiring a recruitment professional, please do get in touch as well. 

If you are interested in hearing more about recruitment, please don’t hesitate to get in in touch with me at stephaniehooper@frazerjones.com, call me on 0207 7415 2815 or reach out to our HR consultant team.