IRP Award Winners - Trevor Pinder, Business Manager of the Year
Your recruitment career
Name: Trevor Pinder Agency: ITHR Group Years in recruitment: 16 years Specialism: Contract and Technology
How did you get into recruitment? I left school with no qualifications, went travelling and then started on a building site. Recruitment found me really – and then I developed a passion for it as I went along.
Has it changed much since you started? Completely. In something like technology, someone with a skills set that was useful three years ago could well be obsolete now. And certainly over the period of time that I’ve been working, the type of consultant has to be a hundred times more professional than they did then.
Why do you think the judges picked you? One of the things they said was that I was prepared to sacrifice my own success for the benefit of the company. My ethos has always been that my team is an extension of myself. For example, I’ve developed a modular training plan. I give two training sessions each week, where I mentor and coach junior managers.
What do you teach in the sessions? Topical things. For example, we analyse where we’ve been strong and where we’ve been weak. You should have a framework when you’re teaching but never a rigid blueprint.
What is the biggest weakness you notice in team-members? The biggest weakness, in general, is that decent billers who get promoted to management level then try to create a team in their own image. But building a team is like putting together a jigsaw: no two pieces are the same. You’ve got to respect people’s own way of doing things sometimes.
What would you do if you weren’t in recruitment? I’ve got a passion for training and developing people so I’d probably have been something like a football coach for children or a teacher.
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