As we come to the end of another year, it’s a good opportunity to sit back and reflect on the successes of the year and look forward to the goals of the next.
This year has been a year of change for me; one that led me to join the team at Head Resourcing. Making the move was not a decision that I took lightly, but I’ll tell you how I got here.
I’ve worked in recruitment for over 17 years, and in my time I’ve had countless calls from rec-to-recs – if you work in recruitment I’m sure these will be familiar to you too – offering the next big opportunities in recruitment. The problem is, there are so many companies in this industry that are focused on things like the hard sell, endless cold calling and strict KPIs, all prevalent due to a blinkered view of the age-old belief that the more you put in, the more you get out. While this is true in the correct context, when you put your focus on these random numbers and not on the real results, this breeds behaviours that may prove successful in the short term, but are not the way a recruitment consultancy should be operating if they are interested in even the medium-term. Some people really will do almost anything to get their sales figures on the board!
Of course, it’s far from being all doom and gloom – working in this industry can be incredibly rewarding. You get to change people’s lives, and can go home feeling positive about the work you’re doing. This philosophy brought me to Head Resourcing – when I first met Huw Martin (Head’s MD), I could see his passion for the business, and his true belief in how recruiters can have a positive impact on the industries they work in had me hooked from our very first meeting.
I have to admit, I usually take ‘company values’ with a pinch of salt, because frankly you hear companies spouting their values all the time, but Head Resourcing’s core values really do reflect the work that we do – this was apparent as I met with more people in the business who all demonstrated the right attitudes (in my opinion anyway) as to the value that recruitment consultants can provide for clients.
I have always believed that if you look after your staff and you understand them, work with them to utilise their strengths and weaknesses, and train accordingly the rest will look after itself. Once I’d come on board, this was reflected in the culture of the business and I am still impressed. We’ve got some great teams here where every member of staff across the board genuinely works with the core values behind every decision, interaction and conversation.
It’s a company that really cares.
Yes, of course we have financial goals (and why wouldn’t we?) but I’m really proud to work with a team of people who don’t put that ahead of doing the right things by our clients, the people we place with our clients, and our colleagues too.
I’m in charge of growing the Leeds office to become one of the best IT, digital and business change recruitment consultancies in the area. We know there will be challenges and the odd setback as we go through this journey, but the thing that makes me feel really positive about 2015 is that we’re committed as a team to make sure that whatever we do, we’re doing it with our core principles behind us. Of course there will be a lot of hard work involved, we’ll make sure we still enjoy coming to work every day.
When you look towards what you want to achieve in the next year, have a think about aligning yourself with a company that believes in the same things as you – when you share the same mentality, you’ll share the same success.