Articles From the Team

My first 4 months in recruitment

I have been with BCL Legal for 4 months now and I have learnt so much in such a short amount of time. I was and still am new to recruitment and it has been a challenging and rewarding experience so far and I still have so much to learn and achieve.

Before joining BCL Legal, I worked as a Fee Earner at a Personal Injury firm and I guess the transition into recruitment has been slightly easier for me as I only handle Personal Injury recruitment in Liverpool and Cheshire. So from the beginning I have had the advantage of understanding the industry that I am recruiting for. There is still so much more too it than this though!

I remember in my interview, I was asked to define what recruitment is and I described it as “matchmaking”. I thought of this in the simplest of terms - I would need to find candidates that can simply do the job. Although this is the crux of what we do, it cannot be defined so simply! There are so many factors that can drive a candidate’s job search and on the surface, everyone (including the old me) thinks it is all about salary but I have learnt to dig a little bit deeper and find out the real reason people look for new opportunities.

At first, I felt digging a little deeper was intrusive but I have quickly come to realise that having more information just means that I can find you the right role, quicker! If you want to make your job search easier for you and for your recruiter, I would recommend being as open and honest as you possibly can!

I really love my job and I honestly never thought I would say this about recruitment before I started. The way that BCL Legal expects you to recruit is so different to my own experiences. Here we make the effort to speak to candidates about their motivations for their job search and we don’t submit CVs without a candidate being fully on board with an opportunity.

My advice to anyone searching for new opportunities would be to do your research on potential firms but more importantly, do your research on recruitment agencies too! Ultimately, we are representing you and it is important that you understand how different agencies operate so you can choose which one works best for you.

I have made placements here a lot earlier than was expected of me, so I owe it to BCL Legal for teaching me how to recruit the right way! I am really lucky to be in such a supportive environment and I am looking forward to the rest of my career at BCL Legal!

For more information contact Georgie Willisford at BCL Legal.