As part of our What Recruitment Means to Me; 500 words campaign Lavanya Peri, In House Recruitment Manager for Topcashback talks about why she loves her job and why it’s worth all the hard work. If you like her writing and want to read more from her check out her LinkedIn articles
Recruitment is a constant way of thinking that exists in my subconscious mind and cannot be a 9 to 5 job that I can do and expect the ideal work life balance. As most recruiters, would agree with me, our brains never turn off and we are constantly thinking of ways to connect with people/ businesses, learn something new online with the plethora of data available on training or market analytics. All this to only survive in the very busy sea of recruiters out there trying to swim over each other.
With the industry evolving rapidly without a parallel, recruitment has become a challenging path of career; demanding marketing, strategic thinking, employer branding, competitor analysis as only a fraction of the skills required apart from conventional recruiting, which was as simple as ‘placing someone in a job’. Not ignoring the woes and worries of the Applicant Tracking Systems and the joys that come with it which I thought was meant to make my life easier. Whilst all of this is supposed to equip me to cross the daily hurdles, I just about manage to cripple towards the finish line. Here is when LinkedIn suddenly decides to throw a new interface thinking recruiters have had it too easy!
When I manage to juggle all this, the rewards are extremely gratifying. The joy of achievement I experience, is what I look forward to at the end of the day when the candidate has started working on their dream job. In spite of all the pitfalls at every stage the rewards of seeing the business growth due to my contribution is a great feeling. I also work with placement students and graduates as part of my role and to be able to motivate them to choose a path of career and guide them into the right direction is an inspiration in itself. The job on its own is more than demanding and I take a lot of responsibility and pride to be able to say – that star of the month or employee of the month was recruited by me.
Having worked within both agency and in house environments, I find the challenges and the rewards being poles apart but are equally appreciated in the respective sectors. Working in recruitment is not for the faint hearted, you will have to be tenacious and show resilience towards your work and be able to deal with the frequent rejections that come with it. I deal with people day in day out and when these interesting creatures come into the picture, nothing is simple. However, that is exactly what makes the job so much more interesting. As with higher risks come higher rewards, so is recruitment- the greater the challenge more rewarding is the career in recruitment.
