A day in the life of a recruitment consultant can very much vary day to day and week by week, depending on the market you recruit into and the clients you deal with. However it is very much more of an involved process than simply finding CV’s that match a clients requirements to fill a job!
You might begin your morning by catching up on emails that have come in overnight – these might be from job applications and CVs sent in through to job orders from clients or interview feedback. Whatever they might be it is always worth checking through them first so you can plan your day. (the planning of the day gets done the night before to have the most productive day but I will explain that later!)
It is important to have not only a plan for your day but also to set yourself some goals to work towards, both for that day but also activities that support your weekly and monthly goals/targets. These might be activity-related or outcome related. For example:
You might also start your day with a team meeting to talk about the roles you are dealing with, collaboration opportunities and potential leads amongst your colleagues to make sure that everyone is sharing information and helping each other to be successful.
On a typical day, most consultants will split their time between business development and candidate work – this could be a morning/afternoon split or spending a couple of hours on one task and then moving on to another. Most consultants will have more than 1 job role they are working at any one time so it is important for them to prioritise and use their time to its maximum.
You might spend some time writing job adverts, posting on Linkedin, and sending marketing to clients and candidates – this is the bit where you need to get creative to ensure that you can find those hard-to-find candidates and not just rely on them applying to your job ad. This could involve looking at CV job boards or asking for referrals when speaking to candidates.
Some days you will have client meetings booked (virtually or in person) so you will need to prepare for those – either research the company, prepare CVs to take along with you for a specific role, or plan questions you want to ask about the business/future recruitment plans.
Something I have always done is, at the end of the day, review what I have done and what needs to be done the following day and write my plan before I finish for the day. Your mind will be fresh with the day’s work, you will have a quick start to the next day with your plan already written and it also means you can go home knowing what your day tomorrow will look like (hopefully, if there aren’t too many curve balls as we can find happen in recruitment!).
The one thing that is key to both business development and candidate attraction (the 2 main parts of a recruitment consultants job) is that you are building and maintaining relationships – you are meeting with real-life people whose lives you can impact and this is the most rewarding and exciting part of the job (part of the reason I have been in the industry nearly 12 years!).
Being a recruitment consultant can be one of the most satisfying industries to be part of and knowing that you are making a difference in so many people’s lives by finding them their next career opportunity and the buzz you get from filling that really difficult role that you have been trying to close for weeks will never get old!
