Articles From the Team

So what do you want to be when you grow up...?

Doctor, lawyer, teacher, airline pilot, video games designer.....

Why does nobody ever say ‘recruitment consultant’?!

From a brief straw poll of colleagues, it was pretty clear that not one of us had recruitment even vaguely in our sights as a career when we were leaving school, or gearing up for university or looking for graduate jobs.

It seems to be something that we ‘fall into’ once we’ve explored something else first and found it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. That’s probably why nearly half of the recruiters at BCL Legal are also qualified lawyers, myself included.

And yet, once we do ‘fall into’ recruitment, so many of us stay for the long term and build great careers, working with people, forging relationships with clients and candidates that can sometimes last decades, earning great bonuses, building teams, developing new business and yes, sometimes changing lives.

I know it sounds like a well-worn cliche when we say that we change lives, but there’s genuinely no greater satisfaction to be had at work than when you find someone the job of their dreams, you coach them professionally and diligently through the application and interview process and they go on to get the job. Happy client, happy candidate, happy boss, happy you.

Of course it’s not always, indeed rarely, as straightforward as sending a CV, getting an interview for your candidate and placing them in their dream role. There’s many a twist and turn along the way, lots of landmines and plenty of hard slog, and it’s not always a happy ending. But that’s what keeps us interested. We like a challenge!

At the end of the day, to succeed in recruitment, you need to be really focused, on the ball, commercially minded, insightful and doggedly determined. But above all, you need to find people interesting. If you’re interested in finding out what makes your candidates and clients tick, you’re going to be able to do a better job for them.

So, you may not have answered ‘recruitment consultant’ to the question ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ but if this sounds like something you’d be interested in now, BCL Legal are currently hiring and we’d love to talk to you.

Get in touch with our lovely talent acquisition manager Joanna Leaver, who is herself an experienced recruiter, and she can tell you more about it.