IRP Award Winners’ – Top Ten Recruitment Tips

As the IRP Awards are now open for entry what better way to show you the value in becoming an IRP award winner, than to bring our favorite recruitment tips from last years’ IRP Award winners.  We like to think of this blog as a check list to remind you of some of the key elements in celebrating recruitment excellence. You have to be in it to win it!

1. Listen to people – “I’ve been trying really hard to listen and build good relationships, and I think that was the main thing people noticed. One of my clients wrote a testimonial for the awards in which he said that I had reminded him of something he mentioned a few months earlier that even he had forgotten about. He was impressed by that I think”.  Viki Walker, CK Group, Winner of Permanent Consultant of the Year and Overall Recruiter of the Year 2013.
2. Build friendly relationships - “I had high billings but I think the main thing is that I have maintained good relationships with key people. With this kind of work you have to get to know the individual projects in great detail and to do that you have to have good relationships with contractors”. Steve Perkins, Orgtel, Winner of Temporary Consultant of the Year 2013.
3. Be informed – “learning as much as you can about a company, making sure everything is clear to clients and candidates and so on”.  Viki Walker, CK group
4. It’s OK to ride one pony - “I think it’s good to ride one pony, be honest with yourself – workout what your good at and stick to it. Looking back on my own career, I’ve made mistakes when I tried too hard to diversify. A generalist is a tough thing to be in the current jobs market”.  Sir Alec Reed, Winner of Lifetime Achievement Award 2013.
5. Love what you do - “You can only really go the extra mile when you really enjoy it”. Sir Alec Reed.
6. There is no ‘I’ in team – Jonathan Swain, Penna, on winning Executive Search Consultant of the Year 2013. “I was really pleased for my team too – it’s all down to the collective hard work of the team. In the three years I’ve been at Penna we’ve worked very hard in a pretty distressed market.
7. Treat those as you would like to be treated –  Daniel Daw, AmoriaBond, on winning Best Contribution to the Community and Best People Development 2013.  “It was amazing. Both the awards are about how you treat people and about what you give back, I think, which is incredibly rewarding because we try very hard in that regard, both internally, which I think relates to the People Development award, and externally, which of course is more to do with the community.
8. Have a clear vision – “We have a five-year plan to grow from 100 people across four offices globally to 300 across eight. That creates opportunities for staff. For example, might they like to go abroad? Do they want to be a manager? And so on. If you don’t give people motivation and proper guidance they can get flatlined and disillusioned. We work hard to have high retention rates”. Daniel Daw, Amoria Bond
9. Immerse yourself, Sometimes! – “I don’t mean that you have to be a workaholic. But the jobs market is very competitive now, much more so than it used to be. You have to enjoy your job. It has to be your hobby as well as your pay check”.  Sir Alec Reed
10. An award can do wonders for your career progression – “This year I have been managing a team of 13 people for the first time”. Steve Perkins, Orgtel

To enter this years’ IRP awards click here.

IRP Team