Working in recruitment #workforus

The whole team at Aintree Races in Spring 2015

The Candidate are currently hiring new consultants to join our award winning agency. Offering a fantastic opportunity for people outside the recruitment industry looking for a career change, we offer great career progression, a great friendly working environment, great perks, bonus structure and loads of days and nights out, read on for more info!

The general trend of unemployment over the last few years is dropping, heading south west, evaporating (result!, wehey!!) and with digital marketing recruitment vacancies outstripping many sectors (clients are crying out for good people, sobbing actually, nah, they're bloody hysterical in places!), this is fuelling a surge in recruitment activity, both in-house and agency side (although being an agency we're doing a bloody good job of helping all our clients, we just need more people to help us!)

'Experts' are talking about skills shortages in digital being their biggest barrier to growth, but similar to the digital problem is the skills shortage in the recruitment industry and those who are recruiting into the digital marketing sector! Can you Adam and Eve it? A skills shortage in the recruitment industry, how ironic! Get your head around that. (#workforus)

So who's recruiting the recruiters? That's an interesting thought for anyone outside the industry, I think, but if you're not interested then just skip this paragraph.. If you are interested (and that's dedication to this blog, well done!), its actually Rec to Rec recruiters and yes, Recruitment Agencies actually have to pay a recruitment fee for those introductions! Yes, we feel the pain too, 20% commission, 'that's outrageous' I hear you say, we need to negotiate! But (and here's the trick) we schedule this into our budget and forecast, so it's not that bad actually (we advise all companies to build a large recruitment budget into their budgets by the way, get forecasting...)

So what the bloody hell are we going to do about this skills shortage? Well like most clients who struggle - the advice is to 'open the brief' (note general annoying recruitment term here meaning to recruit someone just outside of the ideal person spec), then offer them exceptional training and put a package together that would attract great candidates from related sectors that have transferrable skills! Easy peasy! (#workforus)

So yes, before you ask, that's exactly what we're up to here at The Candidate and one of the reasons we're so far ahead of target (and the competition, genuinely) is from working with the biggest digital companies in the North West! We've hired some recruiters who are great, but we're actually looking to recruit from outside the industry and are focussing on amazing people with sales backgrounds, ecommerce backgrounds in a targeted environment, media knowledge, marketing know-how and people generally with a #passion4digital (our partner, the fantastic Salford Uni and Salford Business School) will be proud of that hashtag mention!) One year's office experience is essential too.

Drinks in the sun after an impromptu half day after hitting target very early in the quarter

We've done it before and it's really working.

Check out Laura Walters for example, she's come from a media sales background and joined as eCommerce Recruitment Manager. She's now Head of eCommerce Recruitment, managing a team of 4 people and probably billing more money than any other recruiter in the digital sector in the Northwest!

Or Caldon Henson, he's come from a targeted sales background in the ecommerce sector and is knocking on the door to becoming the company's top biller. He's not from recruitment but now he's working in it and he bloody loves it. And the bonuses are great (as are the nights out, pool competitions, golf lessons, gym membership and everything else that goes with a top-performing consultant.) Caldon's about to be promoted again and his market-leading base salary for his well deserved effort will increase with that!

Let's take that term 'opening the brief' a step further! We've recruited a top-performing consultant from, wait for it, yes you guessed, a potato factory! Yes, unbelievable, we all have hope I hear you say! And yes, before you ask Amy's nationality, it is of course, Irish. Don't be offended though, this blog was written by an Irish man eating a plate of potatoes with brown sauce, so its fine. Back to the point of this paragraph, the consultant in question joined as a Resourcer, had a real #passion4digital (there it is again Salford Uni) and was blogging, social media-ing (is that a word? 'No,' well it is now) and generally really wanting a role in digital, with targets and the possibility to earn big bucks. Welcome home Amy, the best Agency side recruiter ever!

So, as you may have gathered, our multi-award winning recruitment company is unique! It's independently run so there's no pressure or ridiculous targets from outside investors pushing the company in a direction we don't want it to be pushed in. We're in control and the team push the company forward! The two managing partners help steer the boat. They're from a recruitment background and marketing background and we offer a real genuine consultative service (Basically we know what our clients and candidates want because of how we work and our background, simples!) Bang those 2 recruitment and marketing heads together and you've got an outstanding proposition for clients. Recruitment consultants automatically have great clients to work on and candidates who want to work there follow!

Our clients love what we do. We have thousands of candidates looking for new roles and we just need great people to help find them. It's the personal touch that's important and we're here to offer that. We want to expand and we want to talk to you. If any of these points appeals to you and maybe you're open for a quick chat to investigate whether this is for you, then drop us a line. When you call, ask for anyone you want, ask them what its like, then if you fancy it we'll get you in for a coffee, OJ, Protein shake, celery soup, beer, Prosecco, Magners, water, milk, Sainsbury's Chicken Arrabiatta Soup, Coke,  potato puree, Pepsi Max, Lucozade Sport or anything else that appears in our fridge by the time you turn up!

Come #workforus - apply here!