By Carmina Catahan
Carmina Catahan
Recently, a colleague of mine asked me to Google “recruiters are…” and said to have a look at what suggestions came up on Google. So, I did. Well, we actually did it together, and although we saw the funny side to it, and laughed about it, somewhere deep down I felt quite defensive about what I had read.
Which led me to write this blog – what do recruiters actually do?
I can tell you, honestly that recruitment is certainly not an easy job. It’s “champagne and headaches” as a lot of true recruiters would say. You have your big wins that are extremely rewarding (and not just financially), and then you have those times when you just want to bang your head against a brick wall, because things aren’t going to plan…but the most interesting, amazing and hardest thing I’ve learnt about this job is that you are dealing with human beings – emotions and feelings, and human behaviour in the work place.
So, what does a typical week look like for genuine 360 recruiters on a temp desk?
Our weeks consist of something like this…up to 30 plus face to face meetings with candidates or clients where some days you’re sipping on 5 cups of tea and coffee because you’re in back to back meetings – which is certainly not a bad thing as you’re not stuck in the office all day! It actually gives you the opportunity to be a bit more personable with clients and contractors. Catching up with new and existing clients consist of ensuring that you are maintaining that relationship well and that they are happy with your service and it also gives them the opportunity to provide some feedback on the contractors we’ve placed into their roles. Meetings with our contractors to touch base with them to ensure that they are progressing well in their roles and happy with their placement. And then there is interviewing new candidates, because you are probably working on up to 20 different roles that week. These roles can range from simple administration roles to something very niche like an Economist role and everything else in between (HR, Finance, Procurement, Marketing, Special Projects etc.) ….and in between all of that, you’re attending to phone calls, emails, urgent issues that may arise and need to be resolved immediately, oh and don’t forget there is the administration side of the job…paperwork and ensuring that everything that you are doing is legally compliant.
Working on a temp desk is very fast paced and you usually have deadlines of around 48 hours to fill an urgent role, as that is of course the whole purpose of clients approaching you for temporary contractors. Honestly, we hardly find time to actually eat lunch and when we do, we’re half eating lunch at our desk or on the run.
With all of this the challenge of it all though comes down to the quality of service you provide and this is the reason why good recruiters are run off their feet, because as much as the job can be very hectic, demanding and no day ever the same, you can’t be a successful recruiter if you are not producing quality service and quality talent to both your clients and your candidates – if you didn’t do this, you wouldn’t have a desk to manage!
So, the message of this blog, is that recruiters do a lot behind the scenes that don’t always get to be seen by both clients and candidates, and honestly, this is the exact reason why I have been doing this job for over 6 years, and still very passionate about it. It is because the most rewarding part is that I get to help people in every which way I can, and somewhat make a difference.
