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• Trainee recruitment consultant: Debbie

Trainee recruitment consultant: Debbie

This Case Study belongs to Recruitment consultant.

Debbie has a degree in ancient history and archaeology.

I graduated in 2005 without really knowing what I wanted to do after I graduated. There weren’t a huge number of graduate jobs available that were related to my degree and I ended up working in retail. I started at Topshop, on their managers scheme, and this was great because it gave me the opportunity to build a career by adding structure and training and the opportunity to learn lots of new things on the job. After a year I progressed to work for a department store - again within retail but with different products and different customers with different expectations, which meant I was still learning.

When I was ready to move on, I went to the agency that placed me at the department store and during my re-registration the consultant talked me through the possibility of working in recruitment. It sounded interesting: the agency recruited for roles within the retail sector, which I was already clued up on, so it wasn’t entirely out of my comfort zone, but it was an exciting transition moving from working on the shop floor to an office based environment.

I’ve now been here for ten weeks and I’m still learning. My degree didn’t help me to secure the job, but what I learnt from studying does help me day to day, i.e. time management, communication skills and presentation skills. At the moment, I’m getting to grips with using the system and the processes and generating new candidates to register, meeting with the candidates and registering them. I haven’t thought about how I’d like to progress as it’s all very new to me. However, anyone thinking about starting a career in recruitment would need to be confident, as you’d be speaking to clients and very senior candidates; self-motivated, because it’s up to you manage your diary to ensure you hit the targets; and, most importantly, resilient, as there are lots of ups and downs in this job and you really do have to take the rough with the smooth.

Case Study sourced by Zoe Arch of University of the Arts London, 20 November 2009.