Articles From the Team

Recruiters: are you a lone wolf or a team player?

There’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’ is a commonly used phrase across sport and business.There’s also the common response that points out you can make the word ‘me’ from some of the letters in the word team.

Recruitment makes for a particularly interesting study on the subject of team building because while consultants work in teams, individual KPIs and billing targets can inevitably mean a lean towards lone wolf type behaviour.

At BCL Legal, we firmly believe that our team ethos is at the heart of our success. Since 2011, we’ve boasted almost continuous double-digit, year-on-year growth figures; in addition to more than quadrupling our headcount over the same time period. How does this team ethos manifest itself and why should a successful recruiter, used to being a lone wolf in another organisation, want to come and work here?

Being an active and engaged member of a team isn’t necessarily about self-sacrifice. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t bill well. What it actually means is an agreement to a set of behaviours amongst the team - that will benefit the entire team! It means understanding what you need to do to meet your personal billing commitments to the entire team and intentionally doing everything you can to meet those. It means passing on messages and covering candidates on your colleague’s jobs. It means understanding the importance of the database and recording any new information as it comes to light. If everyone agrees to and conforms to these behaviours then you create a framework to realise your own and everyone else’s potential.

When everyone works hard to maintain the integrity of the database, it's easier for everyone to find the right candidates to speak to. When everyone is willing to help out with covering candidates, you can get through long shortlists much faster (particularly useful in a 'fastest finger first' scenario). When everyone works hard all of the time, the team grows and takes more market share and generally starts to squeeze out the competition.

So, if you're a team player or a lone wolf currently working in recruitment, who wants to talk to a business that genuinely sees things differently, then why not get in touch with our internal recruiter Natalie Young to find out more.

The Birmingham office continues to grow apace and there are exciting opportunities to take on desks in patches where we're already market dominant.