What to Expect and Making the Most of Professional Qualifications - Part Four
Your recruitment career
Part four – Bonus knowledge, skills and take-homes gleaned from this course
Our Level 3 Certificate in Recruitment Practice teaches the most important fundamentals recruitment consultants need to know to succeed in their profession and uphold best practice. Libby Stanitsas of D R Newitt talked through how this course rocketed her career.
This blog has been broken down into four parts, you can jump to each part outlined below:
Part one - Working in Recruitment
Part two - Practicalities of the Qualification
Part three - How this qualification has helped your career
Part four - Bonus knowledge, skills and take-homes gleaned from this course
17 On top of the knowledge, what specific skills have you gained from this qualification?
18 What other take-homes have you gleaned from this course?
19 What would you say, if someone was choosing not to take the course, what would they lose out on most?
20 And finally, why should someone take the course now, rather than in a few years down the line?
17 What skills, specifically, would you say you have gained, separate to the knowledge?
Tricky one! Well it helped me be a bit more flexible. But also, at the same time, a lot more detail orientated, especially when it comes to advertising, taking down job descriptions, being a lot more specific, not necessarily being PC but more understanding. More clarity in it that way. It definitely helped me there.
Again, it comes down to thinking about things logically and recording the information correctly. And I think a lot of times there are some job titles that I recruit all the time, like a production planner, somebody who plans the production for a factory. So, because I’m doing them all the time, regardless of if they’re different businesses, different regions of the country or different types of companies: I know what a production planner does so I can go off and do it. But actually, finding out more specifically about the culture, about who they, what companies would best suit them, and even locational considerations all come into play when recruiting. These are all fundamental things that I obviously, usually do really well in but then there are others that I literally had no idea about. For example I grew up in London, I never lived in Scotland, so one thing that shocked me was when Joe taught us about postcode bias. If for example, you’re a recruiting in, say, I think Birmingham is really bad for it, but if you put down Birmingham as someone’s location as in a certain postcode or in a specific area then a lot of companies will reject them instantly because they’re not from the “right” area, which, you could argue, is quite an immoral way to act. I learnt how to be more aware of the subtler issues like that, like finding out if a client is the sort of company that would do that and how to protect your candidates from anything that could be misconstrued as well.
It just goes to show that recruiters have a lot of responsibilities and it’s professional qualifications like this that can ensure we carry out these responsibilities in the best way, most professional way. Obviously, we need to make our money, we need to make placements, but we also need to look after our candidates and clients and make sure we have their backs. The candidates are putting their trust in us to help them find the position of their dreams. That’s a lot of different priorities we have to juggle.
18 What other take-homes have you gleaned from this course?
Simply carrying out the role day-in, day-out, doesn’t necessarily mean that you have got the full depth of understanding. There’s always more to learn and learning from you colleagues is great, but learning from the professionals, learning the perfect way and building your own layers of new information on top. Actually, that’s going to be the best way to progress.
19 What would you say, if someone was choosing not to take the course, what would they lose out on most?
I think they’d lose out on structure, reliability and the reassurance that only a well taught formal qualification could provide. This course has ensured I actually know I’m doing things the right way. You can’t assume that because somebody else is doing something that it’s necessarily the correct thing to do.
At the training courses we had someone qualified to bounce ideas off of. You only have to be in recruitment for a couple of months before you’ve got five or six scenarios that you can bring forward that you weren’t too sure of or you thought weren’t handled correctly- just having those solid, guided conversations can remedy that. You can have them with your colleagues but they’re really just going to take your side. And obviously no manager is going to browbeat you, so with this you’ve got an unbiased point of view.
20 And finally, why should someone take the course now, rather than in a few years down the line?
That comes down to foundations. You know: if you’re going to build a house on difficult foundations do you really want to tear it down? In a relationship or in a process, or you realise what’s happening, early in your career, make sure you have good understanding and you’ll get more respect from your colleagues, from the candidates and from your clients. I think most recruiters go through HR departments for the majority of their placements but why do they do that? It is better to be regimented if you try to do the same. I have had HR people ask me, ‘why are you doing an exam, you’re already recruiting fulltime?’ and what I say back to them, ‘Why did you keep studying for your CIPD?’ things change, demands change, you need to be ahead of it if you’re going to be a leader in the field.
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