Recruitment & Human Resources

Ok, so you might not have wanted to be a recruiter when you were little (it doesn’t really rank high amongst the career aspirations of seven year olds). You may have an image of a recruitment consultant as a shark in a suit: a person obsessed with commission and nothing but commission. The same goes for human resources. You may think people who work in human resources have an unhealthy obsession with post-it notes and office gossip. Well, we’re here to tell you this isn’t necessarily true.

The recruitment and human resources sector is all about people. Businesses need employees! Every organisation wants to hire the most talented people and make sure they keep them there. Recruitment and human resources staff are essential for hiring the right people, retaining the right people and developing them. They keep the world of work ticking over nicely. To work in this industry, you need to be genuinely friendly, have excellent communication skills, bags of confidence and great organisational skills.

A recruitment consultant role is pretty much a sales executive. However, instead of flogging cars or toothbrushes, you are selling people (in a legal way, it isn’t a slave trade). Because the product you are selling can think for itself (and can decide to take up a different job offer), it can be much more challenging than a conventional sales role. You have to persuade both the employer and potential employee that they are a match made in heaven.

Although luck can play a factor, the best recruitment consultants make their own luck through hard work, building relationships and networking. You will be driven by targets, but equally you can make a lot of money from lucrative commission and bonus schemes.

What about working in human resources? It’s a pretty broad area of work. If you have an appetite for variety, you can be a human resources generalist, where you’ll basically be doing a bit of everything in the HR department’s remit. Specialising in the hiring of new staff and helping to train and develop talented employees is another option.

Otherwise, you can focus your efforts on employees’ emotional, social and psychological wellbeing, offering them advice and guidance on their working relationships and individual performances. You could even specialise as an occupational psychologist.

You never know, in years to come, children might be saying: “Daddy, when I grow up, I want to work in human resources and recruitment.”