Podcast 13: Why a career in recruitment can be a great choice

Choosing a career path doesn’t always come easy and the route to your perfect job isn’t always obvious. So, if you’re currently thinking about switching jobs or if you’re looking for your first role, have you thought about a career in recruitment? To help you decide whether this could be an option for you we’ll be speaking with Roop Bhumbra, Head of Talent Development at Hays UK.

1) So Roop, it would be great if you could quickly introduce yourself to our listeners.

I’m Roop Bhumbra and I’m the UK and Ireland Head of Talent Development for Hays Specialist Recruitment. I’ve been with Hays for nineteen years. I started as an associate a very long time ago, worked my way through a few promotions to become a Director and now I’m in a new role, which has been created to make sure we’re looking after all our talent, attracting the best people to come and work for Hays and making sure we train, support and develop their careers.

2. So, we are certainly speaking to the right person for today’s subject because we’re here to talk about why recruitment could be a good choice for those looking for a new career. So just to start us off could you tell us a bit about the industry itself?

Recruitment is an interesting one. Not everybody knows very much about recruitment. In fact, quite a few people just stumble across the sector through recommendations and friends, but everybody that you talk to will tell you that it’s fast-paced, it’s really challenging, it’s really fun and no two days are the same.

It’s hugely rewarding and that’s not just from a job satisfaction and that’s brilliant, but also from a career development and rewards perspective. It’s a really, good sector to join and people do love it, I mean, I certainly do. You really get a chance to impact people’s lives positively. I know that sounds corny, however, everybody that you ask will have a story how they’ve made a real difference to people that they’ve worked with.

There are a few different types of recruitment industries and just to kind of give you a quick flavor of those, you have generalist recruitment, which do a variety of roles across different industries. You have specialist recruitment, Hays is one of those specialist recruitment companies and you find that some companies can be like very small boutiques that are very specialist in their focus. You also get companies like Hays, more international and global so you really can experience a local company feel or a huge multinational global feel. The world is your oyster.

You said there about impacting people’s lives positively. I’ve been working for Hays for seven years now and certainly when speaking to people within the business, everybody has more than one story about how they’ve positively impacted someone’s life and at Hays we are all about transforming people’s lives by getting them their perfect position, so that is nice to hear.

3) If anyone was considering a job in recruitment, what skills and experiences would you say that they need?

To get into recruitment you don’t necessarily need to have any experience in recruitment. Certainly, at Hays, we look at the potential in people and their potential skills. Some of the other recruitment companies are the same and some, if you’re in a very boutique specialist role, might expect you to have some experience there. For us, it’s all about have you got a ‘can do’ attitude.

I think some of the skills that you want are resilience and determination and to be hardworking, and I think people have those in abundance. I think you hear quite a lot about people saying recruitment’s becoming more automated. Processes are becoming influenced by AI, but that means the skills that you need to have in recruitment show that you need a much more human, personal and engaging methodology in terms of the work that you do.

I think the skills for me that make a great recruiter are the fact that you can communicate well. Whether that’s verbally or whether that’s in the work that you do in the written form, that’s important. I think the ability to research and question and be inquisitive is really important, but don’t just ask the questions, take the time to listen to what people are telling you because that tells you so much.

I think you learn from your mistakes and again my own personal journey is that over nineteen years there’s lots of things that I’ve developed and learned from myself and I think being self-confident really helps. So, you’ve learned from your mistakes, okay, that’s fine, but I’ve got the confidence to keep going and develop what I’m doing, but make sure you have a sense of humour, it’s really important. You’ll be able to look back and reflect and say, I’ve learned from that, but equally make sure that you have lots of fun because it can be really challenging at times. That depends on the team around you and the work that you do but you can really have some good fun.

4) Would you be able to give us an example of a typical working day in recruitment just to give people an idea of what their day to day would be like?

Sure, I said it earlier that there are no two days that are the same and I can certainly testify to that over the last nineteen years. Everything is very, very different from day to day, but broadly there are things that you would do as a recruiter throughout the day and again depending on the time of day or the sector that you’re in, you might be working with your candidates in the morning or your clients in the morning, so it just depends on you and your business and what’s relevant to you. But you will be responding to people who are applying to you who want to come and work for your business.

You’ll be interviewing people, how exciting. You get to know and understand and question them in terms of their job, what they do, what makes them tick, what makes them as good as they are and why other people might want to give them a job. For me, that’s really exciting. I think from a client’s perspective, picking up the phone, maybe taking a reference, telling that client about the great person that you’ve met and how passionate you are about finding them the right role because they can make a difference to the company that you’re talking to.

I think the marketing that you do, I think the feedback that you give, it’s all really varied depending on the day and depending on the job. And then you’ve got the job side of what you do and that could be arranging interviews, following up, giving feedback, negotiating on behalf of your candidates about salary or vice versa and counter-offering. It’s great when you can give people good news about their job and say, “Congratulations, you’ve done it, you’ve been successful.” But equally there’s a skill around sensitively giving people feedback that isn’t what they might want to hear, and I think that’s a very typical day.

5) Just going back to the previous answer where you mentioned challenges that people may face. What do you think are the biggest challenges that employees are faced with when they start in a role as a recruitment consultant?

It’s overwhelming in recruitment in terms of the scope and the opportunities that you can have in a recruiting desk, so therefore you can get overwhelmed or you can plan, you can research, you can talk to your peer network or your managers or the people around you, your support network and take advice in terms of how you can manage your workload and manage your day, I think that’s really important.

I think there are lots and lots of skills that you need to demonstrate in recruitment which can be a challenge, but again, find what you enjoy in the skills and the job that you do. But if you’re not so sure whether you have the right skills, talk to your manager or your team about what learning and development opportunities are available to you so that if you find something more challenging you’ve got the right support and you can continue to do well in your job because there are so many different facets to what you do.

The other aspect of it is if you are being a specialist in a company such as Hays or a multinational where you’ve got industry knowledge to gain, that can be overwhelming but again, I’ll always advise anybody to ask for support and make sure they take some ownership of going and doing some research prior to taking the job or even as you are in the job, keep asking questions. Keep your own journey of learning and development going and I think that will, although it’s a challenge, really help you to overcome those challenges. And probably, last but not least, the final challenge I would say is the amount of energy that you might need because it is a full day and it is really fast-paced as I said.

6) Now, taking that into consideration, some of the people that might be considering a job in recruitment, it might be their first job. Would you say that recruitment is suited to someone who’s perhaps fresh out of university and looking for their first role?

Absolutely, I think it’s well suited for those looking to their first job. I think that there are people who’ve been successful in their second or third or fourth career, but definitely for people looking for their first job. We’re at a time where people have multiple careers and having a job for life is probably less relevant and less meaningful than it used to be, but in recruitment you can have multiple careers.

So, you work for a company and in terms of the world of talent and development, you can start in one role, find what you’re good at and develop to another one, look for another opportunity, and that certainly can happen in large recruitment companies such as Hays. I think you can get a lot of roles and lots of varieties and different accounts that use your skill set and for me, it gives you the opportunity to springboard yourself into other roles. So, if you find that you are better working with candidates and you just want to focus on that side of your job you can do that, so almost you’ve got a mini career, but what you’ve got behind you is a company who knows your track record, knows your ability, and therefore you’ve got the benefit of long tenure within recruitment so you get the best of both worlds I think.

I certainly have found that in recruitment and the people that I’ve worked with, that they have found a sector that they really like, and they want to go make a difference. So, for example, during my time within the education sector I certainly found people who worked with schools and thought this is amazing. I want to go be a teacher and you make a difference that way. And then some of them have then said, “Actually now I’ve had my industry experience behind me, I’d like to come back.” So, people exit the sector and then come back, so don’t be put off if you’re a first-timer, in fact, the opportunities are really open to you at whatever level, but especially at a first-time career.

That’s great, you’re able to explore different areas of interest, find out where your strengths are and I suppose that’s one of the reasons, one of the many reasons why we’ve got so many people that have been at Hays for such a long time that there’s variety to it and you’re able to really explore and take up different opportunities.

Yes, and there’s probably something else I’d like to add to that Jon, is that when you go for your first job, absolutely look at a company that matches to your values and your philosophy and make sure that they can show you those additional things that are important to you. Whether it’s work-life balance, whether it’s the career structure, whether it’s your corporate social responsibility, and again, there are some recruitment companies, and I’m proud to say that Hays is one of them that really lives and breathes those values.

7) So, building on what we’ve covered, what would you say is the best thing about working in the recruitment sector?

The first thing is the people. You’ve touched on it from a Hays perspective. The people that I’ve worked with throughout my nineteen years across the globe have been incredibly talented and have shared their expertise and made the journey a great deal of fun and I know I’ve used that word a few times, but it genuinely has been that.

I think on the other side, candidates who I’ve worked with and the clients that I’ve worked with when I’ve tried to support their recruitment projects. A gentleman who I worked with some time ago, when I first started nineteen years ago, we worked on a recruitment project together which spanned a year and because we got to know each other really well, he wanted me to meet his wife and his children so he brought them into the office just to say, “Roop, you’ve made a difference and supported me with the job that I had, which was very challenging and we’ve spent a lot of time together. I’d like you to meet my family,” and we still keep in touch. I mean that is testimony to the people that I work with both from a company perspective as well as making a difference for the clients and the candidates that you can work with.

8) Yes, it definitely is, thank you very much. This has been extremely helpful, and I just have one question left now, and this is a question that we like to ask all our guests. If you had one piece of careers advice, what would that be?

There’s so much you can say on this topic, but for me probably I would say you can choose your attitude and you can show your values as an individual, whatever career you do at whatever level you’re at, so bring your best authentic self to work. For me, it’s asking good questions and listening to people. Having a genuine interest in them and showing the values that you’ve got. Go that extra mile for yourself and for the people that you work with and take every opportunity that you can and if you’re passionate about what you do in terms of your best authentic self, never be afraid to show it.

Did you find this advice useful? You may enjoy some of the related content below:

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