Fancy a career as a Recruitment Consultant? Here are the basics to help you on your way…

Qualifications

It is true that many people often ‘fall’ into a career as a recruitment consultant. Not too many people decide at school or University that this is a career path that they are ultimately planning to take. However, regardless of whether it has always been your aim or not, it is often expected that you have a degree level qualification. For specialist recruitment agencies that recruit for specific types of roles (i.e. Accountancy, Engineering, IT etc.,) a degree in a particular subject or discipline may also be required. However, since  recruitment consultancy is a sales and target driven industry – experience can trump qualifications on some occasions.

Experience

As already stated, since recruitment consultancy is a sales and target driven industry, previous experience working in a targeted business to business sales environment is often required. For a trainee role, some targeted sales experience (telesales / direct sales ) is often still expected. Dealing with business clients face to face, arranging and attending meetings and developing an active client base are all key buzz phrases that you might expect to find on a job specification. If you thought this was very much like a HR Recruitment job – perhaps think again – sales experience trumps any HR / Personnel experience 75% to 25% pretty much every time.

Type of Person

As you are dealing with people and clients face to face and over the phone you need to be a “people person”. If you are more comfortable working on your own and dealing just with paperwork – this is not a role for you. You also need to have a tenacious character and be able to deal with rejection and being told no quite a lot. During the last few years commercial recruitment has become much more difficult and since there are fewer jobs floating around to recruit for, do not expect an easy ride! Expect to have to deal with both meeting and exceeding revenue targets and being performance managed from day one. If you do not like pressure then don’t consider a job as a recruitment consultant!

Skills to become a Recruitment Consultant

– Strong sales and business development skills

– Good communication skills

– Attention to detail skills and the ability to match expectations and requirements

– Good IT skills are ideal but not essential

How to become a Recruitment Consultant

If after reading the above you are still keen, then great! You have the right characteristics for commercial recruitment! Most recruitment agencies will be able to spot a potential recruitment consultant from simply looking at a CV or if a candidate calls into their office.  Therefore, do be proactive in approaching recruitment agencies directly. Make sure that you highlight all your direct and business to business sales experience when applying. If you do not at present have b2b sales experience, gaining a minimum of 9-12 months sales experience and a recent degree will potentially get you a foot in the door as a Trainee. Once you have 2-3 years sales executive and business development experience, you should be ready to be recruited as a full recruitment consultant from day one!

Fancy a career as a Recruitment Consultant? Good luck!! We hope these basic tips help you along the way…

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