What to Expect and Making the Most of Professional Qualifications - Part One
Your recruitment career
Part one – Working in Recruitment
Our Level 3 Certificate in Recruitment Practice teaches the most important fundamentals recruitment consultants need to know to succeed in their profession and uphold best practice. Libby Stanitsas of D R Newitt talked through how this course rocketed her career.
This blog has been broken down into four parts, you can jump to each part outlined below:
Part one - Working in Recruitment
1 What do you enjoy most about working in recruitment?
2 Why do people worry about relationship building in Recruitment?
3 Would you say it’s quite a male-dominated industry, recruitment?
4 How do you protect your candidates from issues like postcode bias?
5 What has your journey into recruitment looked like over your first 18 months?
6 What made you make the change to get into recruitment in the first place?
Part two - Practicalities of the Qualification
Part three - How this qualification has helped your career
Part four - Bonus knowledge, skills and take-homes gleaned from this course
1 What do you enjoy most about working in recruitment?
Definitely. What I enjoy most is that endorphin rush when you have right person in at the right time for the right company. This isn’t a job you would think would changes lives, but actually it does. I’m lucky, because I’ve been with D R Newitt for about 18 months now. The difference I’ve made in my first couple of months, I’m now recruiting for those managers teams and their companies. It’s something, they always talk about building relationships in recruitment as if it’s something you have to do, or they want to turn it into some kind of KPI, but actually that’s the benefit, that’s the good thing that you get to do. It’s really the people that really make a big difference.
2 Why do people worry about relationship building in recruitment?
It’s a confidence thing. Resources aren’t necessarily used to talking to the hiring managers, they’re not used to talking to the decision makers. Their role is mostly to take information about a role, find the candidates and send them on. I think if you are going from bring a resourcer into becoming a recruiter (some people want to get out of resourcing and make the extra money and go the extra mile) this course is a great way to back up your knowledge. And ensure that you’re confident to go and have those conversations. I’m sure that’s what everybody would say, but some of the people I’ve met would say that’s probably right.
3 Would you say it’s quite a male-dominated industry, recruitment?
It hasn’t been in my experience. In my department for example, we’re fairly mixed - there are rooms upstairs which are filled with guys only, I think they tend to work in the more male-dominated industries, as well such as STEM. But women are treated very, very well. In fact the MD of this company is a woman. She started off at the bottom and she’s the best recruiter I’ve ever known! She actually started off as a resourcer, went through into recruitment and now she’s built her own company which is now international with multiple offices. There’s definitely opportunity in this industry.
4 How do you protect your candidates from issues like postcode bias?
Well really, it’s understanding whether or not the hiring company is likely to make that kind of judgement to be liable to something like that, deciding if you want to work on that job or not.
But investigating, in knowing the geographical area as well. And there’s the degree of extremes of the role is really important. I’m fairly new to the role of recruitment, this is something that has never come up before, one I have never really thought of. I’m surprised, but now I’m aware of it and I make sure I keep that awareness in the fore of my mind.
5 What has your journey into recruitment looked like over your first 18 months?
I’ve kind of landed on my feet. I used to do sales. I’d always been the hiring manager before, then a manager and then a regional consultant for a paint company. I’d always been the hiring manager, never had to do the actual recruiting. It was just handed to me. Don’t know what I had to ask for until now. I used to think from doing sales, it’s a pretty easy transition. I like talking to people, I like finding out what’s going on. Recruiters should be naturally nosey I think!
6 What made you make the change to get into recruitment in the first place?
I knew I had the relevant skills and the right kind of personality for recruitment. I knew that I wanted a change to what I was doing. You know, the nice thing about sales is that it doesn’t really put a cap on commission- you can make as much money as you want. And I’m not going to deny it, you know, I’m not too shallow but money is nice!
A couple of my friends ended up in recruitment. By investigating the industry, I found that, actually: there is are massive differences between the companies you can work for. I went into interviews for a few 180 and 360 roles and was offered two, one just around the corner from this office and the other was based in Glasgow. But I know that this had a much, much nicer environment, better offices, better people to come in and meet. Some offices I walked in, you could almost sense that everyone was absolutely stressed and that’s not an environment you want to be working in.
I’m really lucky with my manager at the moment, he’s a great with people manager and doesn’t micro-manage. He’ll check in with me when he needs to but as long as he knows I know what I’m doing he’ll just let me go off and do it! Of course sometimes that can mean making my own mistakes, but I honestly that’s how I prefer to be managed and it’s always been that way. He still always pops in to see how you’re doing and if you need help.
What else is great about where I work personally is the position structure here, and the rewards! My first targeted month was July, so in May I qualified to go on the end of year incentive in January, which was New York City! We stayed in a five-star hotel, they took us on all sorts of tours; all sorts of activities- we were even invited to sit in the director seats at a basketball match, all sorts of things. I had a very good time! These end of end of year rewards are awarded to the top ten consultants in the company. Although I’d only been with the company for a full year I managed to sneak into tenth place in the final hour on the last Friday of the competition. I was thinking ‘will I make on offering?’ but I made it, I had a good relationship with the hiring manager and told him about it. And not only that the candidate I placed is still thriving in that role to this day! I also got a few other members of that team hired. So it was an absolute win-win. It was such a good company with really interesting candidates. The candidate was absolutely exceptional and what she does. She had some family issues but the job allowed her flexibility to manage that and still complete her tasks really efficiently. I placed a couple of people in the team before I placed her as manager, and they all love her, she’s a real success story.
Honestly The candidates are the best part. All of my placements have got a story behind them. I could tell you everything about them. You have to trust them, it’s mutual and they have got to like you too. And I try to find out as much information about them and their preferences as possible- Like I said, being naturally nosey really helps in this role!
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