Top Student: Rebecca Drinkwater

Rebecca Drinkwater is a consultant at KBM Resourcing and was top student in February’s Level 3 Cert RP exam How has 2015 been?

It's been a fantastic year so far. I was very pleased to get the Cert RP and even more to be top student. I studied hard and on top of that I recently passed my 9 month graduate training scheme at KBM so I’m a full consultant now.

What sectors do you cover?

We're oil gas recruitment specialist - but we all have specialist areas. I specialise in design and project recruitment. I really enjoy it, there's never a quiet day and we like to have a personal aspect. I studied zoology at uni, but was always really interested in the recruitment science part of thing.

Any crossover between recruitment and zoology?

We have a lot of team projects and presentations. A lot of the reports I did at uni have helped me there, but the actual zoology side of things didn't cover much. But I did a lot about environmentalism and the oil and gas industry, and I used to be involved with voluntary projects at uni, so there was a strong recruitment element to that as well.

What’s it like recruiting in the oil and gas industry right now?

The price of oil has been down on the past few years, and that has thrown a little bit of caution with some companies with hiring any more candidates. Unfortunately there have been some redundancies in the engineering sector, so they would be finding that market quite hard. The good thing is there are a lot of highly skilled recruiters looking for work right now, which we love to do too.

How did you find the Level 3 Certificate in Recruitment Practice course?

I found it really useful. I had been working at KBM for three months when I started and it complemented my training. I found the selling techniques really useful. I’m definitely a better recruiter because of it, and it's been really good putting that into practice at work.

What advice would you give your younger self on her first day?

Be persistent and not give up - you can receive hundreds of no’s during a month but all it takes is one yes.