Partner Article

Working in recruitment in 2016

The recruitment industry has changed ten-fold in recent years and Rick Knights, Head of Rethink Recruitment in Birmingham, has been investigating the highs and lows, and what it means to work in recruitment in 2016.

Rick heads a team of 20 with a client portfolio predominantly based in the Midlands. He’s been in his role for 6 years at Rethink and in recruitment for 12 – so he’s certainly experienced recession times and is striving to keep his recruitment team on the up over the coming years.

He’s an avid blogger too, and likes to share his thoughts with Birmingham based companies, working alongside them to strengthen their teams as the increase in demand for employees in a wide variety of sectors, in particular technology, has become prevalent over the past 18 months.

Rick recently shared his thoughts about the old school perceptions of recruitment, versus modern recruiters who actually make decent careers and professions out of it – here he explains:

“I’m a big advocate for the career recruiter and what our industry now offers us long term, but with the long term recruiter comes a big warning sign. Let me explain why.

“Like any economy and market the recruitment market it cyclical, those that have been in the industry 20 years will have recruited through two pretty baron patches – the worst of which we have just seen the back of. Those with 10 years’ experience would have lived through just the more recent recession, likewise boom times have cyclical with Y2k giving our industry a boost and the mid 2000’s being as good a time as I can remember in our industry.

“So why am I so wary of a recruiter who has lived through this rollercoaster industry of ours for a long time? Bad habits, outdated methods and complacency.

“I am a technology recruiter, always have been and probably always will be and the tech industry moves faster than most, which means as a recruiter if you don’t change your ways, you’ll go the same way as the dingo’s, dodo’s and as Greg Savage has commented a number of times, the dinosaur.

“The DNA of a Dinosaur Recruiter is of someone who thinks they know best, is stubborn and unwilling to listen to industry experts or colleagues and believe that they are going through a “bad patch” when their candidates all come second to headhunted passive candidates, unearthed by a recruiter, probably 10 years their junior, that actively networks and headhunts in a targeted market. Believe me, when it happens for the 10th time it, it’s no accident. The dead man walking in to your building every morning is the recruiter who doesn’t innovate and change to adapt to today’s market. Networking, using their contacts to get an insight in to a specialist market and being the recruiter in their chosen discipline.

“We, the company, have a responsibility too. Our part is one of education and training, however the old adage of taking a horse to water couldn’t be truer in this instance. We could spend millions on training our recruitment army to be savvy networkers and social media warriors but if they don’t believe in change and change their early 2000’s ways they will see their customers go elsewhere one by one. Why? For better candidates….the dead man walking can’t deliver the best people anymore.

“The career recruiter survives by continuing to be at the forefront of their market, switched on, adaptable and not too proud to learn from those around them.”

Rick is just one of the many forward thinkers within this global recruitment business, which also has offices in London, Bristol, Birmingham and the Far East.

Rethink was established in 2005 and, in the ten years since its inception, has grown by delivering recruitment and talent management services internationally, helping transform client businesses into higher performing organisations.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Cubed Comms .