Recruitment

Recruitment roles are quite similar to a lot of sales jobs, but rather than selling cleaning products or cars, they are selling people and their skills.

A recruitment consultant’s working life is target driven, and they can potentially make a lot of money from lucrative commission and bonus schemes.

Jobs in graduate recruitment

Those moving into this sector can specialise in a variety of areas; graduate recruitment, for example. Organisations that recruit a large number of graduates each year tend to have their own in-house graduate recruitment team. This department helps to attract the very best graduates to the company. They then assess each application before a shortlist is brought in for interview. The graduate recruitment team will also make preparations for the arrival of the new graduate recruits once they’ve been selected, and help them transition successfully into their new job.

Jobs in in-house recruitment

In-house recruitment is another area in this sector.  Larger employers may favour the use of an in-house recruitment department, rather than outsourcing their recruitment needs to other agencies. The in-house recruiting team acts as an extension of the HR department. They liaise with the different divisions of their company, understand their hiring needs and then go and find the best people for the job.

Often, in-house recruitment can be much more cost-effective and efficient than employing external agencies. The members of the team are only recruiting for one single organisation, which allows them to develop an expert insight into what their company specifically looks for in a candidate. The in-house recruitment team will advertise job vacancies on their own website, use internal databases and job sites to search for candidates, coordinate internal employee referrals, and build an extensive network of potential candidates.

Jobs in recruitment agencies

Recruitment agencies are another area in this sector. Trying to find suitable candidates for job vacancies can be a tricky process, especially if a specific job requires a niche mix of skills. For busy companies, the meticulous search and selection of candidates can exhaust a lot of time and resources. Therefore, a lot of companies will hire recruitment agencies to do the job for them. This saves a lot of time and hassle for the company, and lets them get on with other things.

These agencies provide a ‘search and selection’ service. If a company needs a job opportunity filled urgently, then ‘search and selection’ agencies will be used to search for the best candidates and select the best people to submit to the employer.

Jobs in executive search

Executive search/head hunting is another side of this sector. Head hunting is a recruitment method often employed when other recruitment efforts have been unsuccessful. If a job role is incredibly specialist there may only be a small number of people in the world who can fit the requirements. Consequently, it makes sense to approach candidates who have all the skills and experience (and usually a good reputation within their particular industry) directly, rather than posting adverts on the internet or trawling though databases.

Recruitment apprenticeships

School leavers wanting to work in this sector could do an Advanced Apprenticeship (Level 3) in roles like trainee/junior recruitment consultant, in-house resourcer and account representative.

There are Higher Apprenticeships in recruitment available, for school leavers with A-levels. You could train in roles like recruitment consultant, senior/principle/lead consultant and account manager.

School leavers could also look at the recruitment-related courses on offer at further education college and university.