As exam results season draws to a close, students everywhere may be wondering quite what to do next. For some, they will have achieved their desired grades and will be off to join their university or graduate scheme of choice. But for others, the grades their tutors have told them they will need to start a successful career will not have materialised. Not everyone is academic, and not everyone passes exams.
But that doesn’t mean those people can’t be successful.
When I first started out in HR, interviewing seemed like something of a black art to me. While there are days that it undoubtedly still does! – I like to think that over the years I have been able to disperse some of the smoke and mirrors around what an interview process that delivers results needs to look like.
I’ve blogged before about my frustrations with recruitment. Recruitment, at times, can seem like something of a dark art. You post a job advert which elicits a huge response and end up finding your perfect candidate. You post the same advert just one month later, get merely a handful of responses and are left with the Hobson’s choice of recruiting a seriously sub-standard candidate, or recruiting no one at all.
I was recently criticised by a friend. I was bemoaning the standard of job applications and candidates I was getting for a role I was recruiting for. Her – not unreasonable – pushback was: How can they be expected to know what you want, if you don’t tell them in the first place. And, while I would argue there needs to be a degree of common sense in such things… I can’t deny that very few first – or even second or third – jobbers are properly prepared by schools and universities for what it is that recruiters are really looking for.
In the two years and four months I’ve worked at Benefex, I’ve received almost 3,000 emails from recruiters. That’s not counting the emails I’ve deleted, face to face approaches, and multiple phone calls every hour. Broken down, that works out as around 5 emails coming into my inbox from recruiters every single working day. And, on average, I would say that 80% of those are unsolicited and are therefore unwanted.
Much like buying a house, finding a new job can be simultaneously one of the most exciting and one of the most stressful life events that you will undergo. During the week, you will likely spend the majority of your waking hours at work. Finding and choosing to accept that new job is therefore not something that should be taken lightly – the effects of taking a role or joining an organisation which isn’t quite right for you can be long lived and far reaching.
I am open about the fact that I find recruitment simultaneously one of the most frustrating and rewarding parts of my role. Rewarding, because when you get the perfect fit between candidate and role, there is nothing more satisfying. Frustrating, because, despite everything you might hear and read, there is no cast iron guaranteed method of getting to that desired outcome.
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