Recruiter Rules – Know What You Want Long Term

It is not uncommon to find many recruiters without a game plan. You know a game plan for their life and career? So what is your game plan? Did you just fall into recruitment and are now wondering how you map out your future?

Perhaps it has only just occurred to you that this might be worth spending some time on. That is good news because for most recruiters the penny doesn’t drop, that they will need a career plan; unfortunately that is why they ‘fail’; lucky breaks tend to happen to people that take focused action.

So why does planning work? Well if you don’t have a goal to head towards it is terribly easy to get distracted and end up going where the current might take you. The smart recruiter has a plan-both short and long term.

A long term plan can be quite simple-pass my probation, move to a company with development opportunities, make great billings, get promoted, retire to Eastbourne! Not exactly inspiring. If you are serious about a career it makes sense to study the ‘recruiter’ game plan in detail; even down to your particular sector. Yes of course you will need to build in a contingency plan for ‘things’ that might happen that are out of your control. Interesting though the switched on recruiters will have seen the indicators of a change long before it happens and will have planned accordingly.

I spoke to someone recently who said, “Who would have predicted the scrabble for talent then?” I didn’t answer-the truth was any recruiter who took an active interest in their industry.

So study how recruitment in a commercial setting works- hint we can tell you!-even down to your particular sector. Analyse the progression steps you need to go through to hit your goal. That might be to eventually own your own recruitment agency or be a recruitment manager with a big player.

Work out how many steps it might take you.Think through each step and how it will help you develop yourself. This can be; gaining experience in a particular market, learning people management skills, understanding business growth-you know the type of thing.

Then work out how you will make each step. This might be moving department or branch or moving to a different company altogether. If you are in a small agency you are unlikely to get the opportunity to become a billing manager, which is a huge experience gap if you want to then go on to be a director or own your own agency.

You need to have that compelling future in other words start with the end in mind. You can then look back and identify all the steps you will need to take- this is exactly what I did when I had the dream of creating GSR2R.

Now here is the thing; you can have anything you want. Many people don’t dream big and as a result end up being totally underwhelmed by what they achieve. When I started in recruitment I had a dream to have my own successful rec to rec agency in London. It took planning and focus and here we are with a great team who have placed hundreds of recruiters.

So what is your dream? You know what comes next; start planning.

Till next time,

Cheryl and the GSR2R Team