Life Beyond Recruitment - Moving into the Industry

In the last 6 months, I've had about 10 conversations with recruiters looking to make a move into business development or into the world of agency services - whether it's to flex their career, learn a new skill or go from placing the people who do the cool work, to doing the cool work themselves.

Every career path in this space is different - the beautiful thing about recruitment is you get a ton of exposure and variety. But it does require hustle and when your service/product offering relies on people, you definitely see the good, bad and the ugly.

The thing I struggled with most when considering a life beyond recruitment was understanding what the hell my skillset was, and I've seen that in the conversations I've been having in the last few months. The answer is - it's broad! - I always felt lucky to be paid to speak to people all day. But there's a lot more to it than that. Every conversation involves listening and influencing, until it becomes second nature.

You're always managing a process 10 steps ahead- often juggling multiple job openings, multiple candidates, interview stages and navigating the competition in the world of contingency. You need to have a healthy respect for competing agencies in the market, and nurture your relationships constantly. After several years on the job (if you're decent), this does become a lot easier - your network, reputation and client referrals seem to do the job for you (on a good day - the graft rarely ends). On top of this, you need to be credible, trustworthy and market yourself all the time to prospective clients and candidates. I'll never forget my first proper recruitment interview, where the million dollar question was that you live or die by the quality of building relationships.

These soft skills have shaped my career since, but it's hard to put them on your CV and expect results when applying for a job, as they're the 'copy and paste' skillsets that everyone who's 'hardworking and organised' puts in the first line of their CV *yawn*. Also, when you're applying for jobs outside of recruitment, noone cares how much you 'billed' as it becomes irrelevant.

The transferable skills that will help you get a job anywhere

• Relationship management
• Project management
• Expectation management (this includes managing upwards in your org, with clients and colleagues)
• Cross-sell and up-selling
• Marketing
• Personal Branding
• Market expertise - I didn't stray from the industry I knew and have built my network in. That said, it's grown considerably and expanded as I've developed my knowledge from within organisations
• Negotiation skills
• Closing contracts (it's less about 'billings' but knowing you can seal the deal!)

I also had some pretty big skills gaps I'd never considered...

I'd never built a powerpoint presentation before leaving recruitment (although I'd consulted on many interview decks - there's a distinct difference though between providing feedback and building your own material), or been made to stand in a room and present to a sea of people (this still gives me heart palpitations but the thrill at the end is like nothing else).

I enjoy doing both external facing work, and internal facing project work, but I've seen this is not for everyone and it's wrong to assume that everyone coming out of recruitment has the same skill set and drivers just because you've been doing the same role. The BD machine who loves to cold call, prospect and the thrill of the chase, is different than the person who wants to build an end to end strategic approach and navigate the complexities of closing the deal. I know which camp I fall into, and I know which camp some of my best performers fell into when we figured out the right rhythm....

Business development comes in all forms - the smaller the company you're in, the more you'll be expected to lead processes end to end. The larger the company, your role becomes more about directing the flow of development and supporting the experts to deliver the client outcomes behind the scenes.

What I know to be true, is if you're managing or hiring an ex-recruiter (who has tenure and a good reputation), you're going to have one of the most hard-working and grafting people in your business - you just need to be willing to capitalise on their innate capabilities and to nurture their development areas/technical capabilities to get up to speed on the requirements of the role at hand.

#careerdevelopment