Already I’ve reached the end of my three weeks interning at Permanent People. Although it’s the beginning of the day, I have a funny feeling it’s going to go very swiftly indeed. Across the three weeks I’ve gone from knowing very few things about the world of recruitment to actively calling, screening and help place candidates into roles around the British Isles.
From the first moments of walking into the office I began the dedicated search for workers using databases, reading CV’s, learning that everyone approaches their’s in a slightly different manner and later applying this to my own to construct a CV that I know I would read if it was sent to me, (not that I made up any jobs!) Already I could see how this experience would help shape the person I am when it comes to the process of hunting down that perfect job. I then listened to the director Paul interview candidates and saw the approach taken by the company as a whole. Whilst using a direct but friendly tone, casual in many places, the candidates soon opened up and made jokes clearly settling into the call that for most comes out of the blue. Applying such functions to my own interviewing style helped massively, instead of assuming that all is serious in the working world, taking individuals as individuals is something that we all need to remember from time to time, tarring everyone with the same brush because of their job role or even their previous situation would be a very silly and misinformed thing to do indeed.
Although the process can be lengthy in places, and other factors come into play, recruitment is something that I think most people aren’t aware of. I told Paul when I reached the office on the first day that recruitment just wasn’t an option that most are aware of. It was never told to us in school, is was certainly never mentioned in A levels, and I’m assuming unless you did a directly relevant degree, it was never mentioned as an option or even as a tool to help get you into the career path that you want to be in. It’s strange that now I would consider going to a recruitment officer and using the databases I’ve used to find candidates over looking into a local job center or national paper as my first port of call. Without a doubt there is a lot of information out there in the hands of people who know what they’re talking about that we are simply unaware of.
Hopefully in the near future the UK will climb out of the dire employment situation and everyone will at least be able to be placed rather than waiting around for jobs to be created out of thin air. Until then, recruiters like the team at Permanent People will carry on ploughing through the thousands of CV’s and making sure that everyone gets to where they want to be, one person at a time, without having to find a genie or hope a fairy godmother appears. Until next time,
Mike
