Why graduates should consider a career in recruitment
As a fresh graduate, considering a career in recruitment can be quite a remote and unconventional option. It is not the typical career pathway that one would take due to limited exposure and awareness about the profession itself. Unlike business and medical studies that prepare our future as finance managers and doctors respectively, there are no educational courses currently available that prepare graduates in becoming recruiters.
Most people – including many of our recruitment consultants, assumed that recruitment was more of a HR-related job, one that mainly connected candidates with a suitable role. However, after stumbling into the recruitment industry and joining SThree, they could personally attest that working as a recruiter is more than that. ‘Recruiter’ is not a lofty job title – many don’t realise how empowering it is to be able to make a difference to people’s lives as a recruiter.
Here are the six reasons why we strongly believe that graduates should consider a career in recruitment and why we regret not knowing about it sooner:
1. There is no waiting period
Compared to companies in other industries that offer a two to three year graduate program, you will be able to hit the ground running when you join a recruitment firm. You will not be restricted to an entry-level salary for the first few years of your career and you will be able to see the tangible benefits of your hard work within months – rather than years if you enrolled in a graduate program. As a high performing consultant, you will also be able to see the immediate results of your hard work by way of faster progression, higher pay and more incentives-driven benefits.
2. You will have greater control of your progression
Working in a recruitment firm allows you to take full ownership of your career progression. The harder you work, the quicker you will be able to rise through the ranks of your organisation. For example, our salary and rewards structure at SThree go hand in hand with how much time and effort you put in. The more placements you make and the happier your clients are with your work, the quicker your progression with us will be. To give you an idea, on average a high performer can reach a managerial position within three years in the recruitment industry. Last but not least, if you perform well, you will be able to make more money as most recruitment agencies have a commission structure in place.
3. You will be able to transfer your skills from a sales role
For those who do not know much about recruitment, it may come across as a HR job, one that focuses on hiring the best people and creating a positive workplace culture. However, as you dive in deeper, you’ll find out that recruitment is actually more a sales role. To put it into perspective, while salespeople convert leads to customers, recruiters turn candidates into hires. Furthermore, just like how salespeople keep track of all their leads, the same applies to a recruiter managing their candidates. In a recruiter role, you will have to sell the position to the candidate, and also sell the candidate to the client. At SThree, many of our recruiters come from a sales and retail background as they found that their communication and interpersonal skills gained in a sales role were easily transferable to a recruitment role.
4. You will enjoy travel incentives
When we ask our consultants at SThree why they chose recruitment as a long term career, most of them would mention job stability – with the benefit of travel. Most recruitment firms offer travel to incentivise employees to meet their targets. At SThree, we have arranged incentive trips around the world and have flown our consultants to Seoul, Bali, Amsterdam, The Whitsundays and to the snowy caps of Queenstown and Thredbo over the past couple of years. At the end of this year, we will be bringing our people from different offices across the Asia-Pacific region at our annual regional conference in Bali. So if you like to travel with all expenses paid, you will definitely enjoy a career in recruitment!
5. You will be encouraged to maintain a healthy work life balance
As recruiters, it is part of our role to negotiate an employee benefits package that the client is willing to offer and that the candidate is willing to take. One of the trends that we have seen is that candidates value employers who offer a healthy work-life balance culture. We cannot agree more as it also strongly resonates with our work ethic at SThree. This is why we offer flexible hours to our employees and encourage them to take an extended lunch break so they can fit in a trip to the gym. On top of that, we provide our employees with health insurance and wellness memberships as we want to encourage them to adopt an active lifestyle which in turn will enable them to be more productive at work.
6. You will be working with colleagues from around the world
Joining an international recruitment firm is a career path that will allow you to enjoy a global experience as you work with colleagues from overseas offices and leverage on the knowledge from other parts of the world as well. It might even help local employees who are based overseas to return to their home country whilst staying with the same company. Compared to a brand new employee, the transition will be smoother as they would already be familiar with the company values and ways of working. To give you an example, our office at SThree Sydney comprises of colleagues from South Africa, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, the UK and of course, various parts of Australia. We ensure to provide our employees with global opportunities across our offices located in more than 40 countries. If you are after a multicultural and international experience, then you might want to opt for recruitment companies with a strong international presence.
What would be expected of you as a fresh graduate joining a recruitment firm like SThree?
On your first day: You will join one of our awesome specialist teams and be assigned a vertical market. You will then be sourcing candidates for clients you will be working with. SThree has two operating recruitment brands in Australia – Huxley that specialises in banking services and Progressive Recruitment that specialises in technology and engineering. You will also spend your first day going through our induction program and getting to know everyone in the office!
In your first week: You will partner with a buddy – usually a Senior Consultant or above, who has been with the business for more than a year. Your buddy will introduce you to our culture at SThree and our ways of working. These include but are not limited to our flexible working hours, employee wellness benefits and other team events that we take part in throughout the year such as charity events, weekend football games, lunchtime runs, bake-offs, movie nights and Vivid Sydney cruise amongst many others.
In your first six months: You will take on more responsibilities within your assigned vertical market under the mentoring eye of your team manager. You will be organising meetings with clients and candidates and making your first few placements. With the market insights you would have acquired from your role, you will also start to advise job seekers about the conditions of the market and which jobs would be most suitable to their needs, skills and experience.
In your first 12 months: You will enrol in our award-winning training program called Recruitment Campus throughout your first 12 months with the business. Our training program has been recognised by the recruitment industry and this year, we won the Best Training and Development Initiatives Award and Best Medium Company To Work For at the 2018 Recruitment Awards. At SThree, we understand that hands-on experience is important so we have rolled out a holistic program that includes self-learning modules, classroom training, on-desk coaching, experiential learning and various offsite activities.
Interested in finding out more?
The above are key takeaways that we want to share with you. If you are interested or have any questions, we are more than happy to speak with you and tell you more about why we love what we do! Feel free to give us a call on 02 8251 2120.
