From Developers to Designers - IT Recruitment from The Candidate!

Jack Such joined The Candidate as a Digital Marketing Intern a year ago and now he's grown into one of our highest junior achievers as an IT Recruitment Consultant! We sat down with Jack and asked what it was like to learn about UX, UI, HTML, CSS and PHP Recruitment within such a short period of time and why he chose Recruitment over Marketing! 

During his summer break from Salford University, where he currently studies Marketing, Jack became part of The Candidate's team as a Digital Marketing Intern in Manchester. Despite his hard work in our Marketing Department, it was Recruitment that caught his eye and in April this year, he became part of our newly established IT Recruitment team!

Throughout my marketing internship, I got a great feeling of how recruitment works, and the whole environment around the work process caught my eye straight away! It was the way the teams worked together to deliver great client and candidate service that really motivated me to go in to recruitment. Surprisingly, it's not a selfish environment at The Candidate and everyone looks after each other. I wanted a job like this, where you have to push yourself a lot to reach a team goal whilst getting loads of training and support.

Furthermore, the way Brian Matthews, our Managing Partner runs the recruitment teams is very inspirational to me, as he is a leader with a vast amount of experience. He doesn't just delegate tasks, he also directs us, meaning we all contribute to the same goal. The other managers within the agency work the same way, so we all know what we are aiming for and how we're going to get there.

So basically… It was everyone in the company who inspired me to get involved with Recruitment.

In addition to his growing success within the company, Jack recently joined our newly established IT Recruitment department

When we established the IT department I knew instantly that I wanted to be part of it. Technology is evolving rapidly. For example, using Big Data to analyse consumer behavior to identify clusters and create user personas is becoming an important element within a company's segmentation or marketing strategy.

Creative industries are constantly driven by new technology, but it was a big challenge for me to get so focused on IT. I had to learn the terminology for Designers like UX, UI, HTML, CSS and understand the Developer language involving PHP, .Net, Java and Agile as well as SQL to know databases, so I could understand my candidates' jobs and communicate with them effectively. However, I picked this up quickly as Matt Skelton, our Head of IT Recruitment, taught me everything I needed to know. He encouraged me to read a lot of material to make sure that we are on the same level of knowledge as our candidates. Having a great rapport with candidates and clients can help develop you into a great consultant, truly offering a great consultative service.  

IT has become my passion as I like to work with creatives and people who have a lot of ideas which are going to be new and exciting. I want to continue working with Matt as he has been very supportive and taught me everything I need to know in order to be successful - which is just proof of how good manager he is and what an inspiration he is to me. However, I learn from both the eCommerce and Agency teams as well, which gives me a complete awareness of the digital marketing sector as well as technology. 

We asked Jack, what the future holds and what his ambitions are. 

When I finish my degree in Marketing I want to work full time for The Candidate and grow my career here. It is my ambition to get to a point where I lead a recruitment team, as I want to share my knowledge with junior teams as Matt has done with me. I want to get to a point, where people are looking at me in the same way that I look up to the senior management here. I want my name to be in the industry and the to-go person for Technology jobs.

It's not important which study channel or line of work you've chosen to date. If you love dealing with people and a range of clients whilst delivering great service then maybe IT recruitment is for you. There are ups and downs, but with a strong team, things always end up positive in a successful company like The Candidate.

I like what we do, who we are and where the company is heading. We are growing quickly and it is exciting to be part of such rapid growth and success. I instantly felt that this was a company who did recruitment in a different and successful way.

Do you want to be part of us and grow your career quickly? Want the potential to earn above the average salary in a great environment? We are recruiting for several roles within our agency and we would like to hear from you!

Give us a call on 0161 833 1044 or apply for one of the roles online here

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