Shadow a Recruiter for a day

 

David Carr joined GPW Recruitment in 2006 as a Trainee Recruitment Consultant. Shadow David as he takes you through what is usually an average day in recruitment.

 

Hi, I’m Dave and I work as a Recruitment Consultant within the M&E Trades division recruiting skilled trades such as electricians, welders and pipe fitters.

 

My role is very specialised in that I need to know the technical aspects of what my candidates do. It took a while to pick this up but it helped by going out on site visits to meet candidates and clients and gaining a hands on understanding. It can be quite daunting at first but you quickly find your feet.

 

My day to day role is very varied and no day is ever the same. I usually start work at 8 a.m. but if I have candidates starting work that day I like to be in the office at 7 a.m. to check that my candidates are up and ready for work. Should the worst happen and someone let us down, it gives me the opportunity to fix the problem before the client even knows there was an issue and provide a standby replacement.

 

Being successful in recruitment revolves around good organisational skills. If you can’t keep yourself organised you lose control of everything, so diary management is essential.

 

So, once I have checked my starters I have to prioritise my tasks for the day… which can change at any moment with a phone call from a key client.

 

Many people have the perception that recruitment is about Human Resources and obviously it is to a certain degree. However, the role of a recruitment consultant is all about sales, sales, sales. We are constantly selling whether it be our services to our new or existing clients or job specs to candidates. You have to be very commercially aware in order to take all opportunities in the market.

 

My morning may consist of a database search for a specific kind of discipline for a live vacancy followed up with phone calls to the search results. We interview as many of our candidates as possible as this helps to identify key skill sets and personality traits and helps us to sell our candidates to our clients.

 

It is vital that we keep in touch with our clients and so as a team we set time aside during the day to contact our client base, new and current, and this is a key part of my role. From this my whole day or week could change again depending on which vacancies are notified to me at this time. It is also essential that I get out to meet my clients as often as possible so during the afternoon, time permitting, I would probably go on a client visit.

 

Time flies by as the role is so varied and before I know it the working day is over. What makes the role so satisfying is the different people, clients and candidates I get to deal with and the fact that no day is the same. I get a true sense of achievement and satisfaction from placing people into work and the buzz of developing a brand new company into a user of our services is great.

 

We do work long hours and by the end of the week it can be tiring but the rewards and the job satisfaction make it all worth while. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.