- Thread starter
- #21
I have a lot of experience in many fields and am a degree qualified engineer.
I have a lot of drive and ambition and thought that I could make a difference in the field of recruitment, as I have employed people in the past and have been a pretty good judge.
I have found the recruitment consultants here to be mainly in their early twenties and have little knowledge industry and were not able to answer my questions.
I shudder to think that these people will be responsible for submitting short lists of prospective candidates with the limited knowledge that they have.
There's two sides to that though, you don't need to be an expert in the industry you recruit in to be a good recruiter. I recruit into the clinical trial sector within Pharma, I don't know much about clinical trials. Enough to sound like I do to someone outside of industry, but not enough to fool someone who actually does the job. It's not a recruiters job to be an expert in the industry they recruit to, it's to be an expert in recruiting.
There's also this perception that a recruitment consultant's job is to find work for candidates. It isn't, the job is to make your company money. It's a cut-throat industry and the consultants that mess around trying to find jobs for people that they like, rather than only working with the people that can make them money, are the ones that ultimately fail. Anyone going into it should be aware of that.
You need to be able to constantly ask yourself "Is this conversation going to make me money?" If the answer is no, then you need to end it and pick up the phone and have a conversation that will. Not all agencies are like this, I should add, there are plenty where you can work 9-5 and earn £30K a year having a nice chat on the phone all day. Fine for some people- don't apply to this if that sounds like you.